To Be Free: Studies in American Negro History

TO BE FREE

STUDIES IN AMERICAN NEGRO HISTORY

BY HERBERT APTHEKER

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK

To the memory of my parents and brother

SECOND EDITION, 1968
COPYRIGHT, 1948 BY

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., INC.

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY

OF flIRFPTa

1

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO
SECOND EDITION

Twenty years have passed since the writing of the original
Introduction for this book. It would not be easy to find in
human history two more significant decades than these; not
least in this accounting would be the levels reached in the
liberation struggles of the black millions within the United
States.

To the substance of the previously-penned Introduction
we would re-emphasize a thought already expressed there:
the history of the Negro people in the United States is revo-
lutionary. It is so because these people have been the most
oppressed; it is so because this oppression has created and
has been bulwarked by racism, a concept which insists,
among other lies, that the victims have no history. Hence,
the very existence of the history, as well as the actual content
of that history — affirming the will toward full freedom —
represent, in the racist United States, a transforming force
and reality.

This force and reality must be borne in mind, for the level
of the struggle has reached the point where it can no longer
be denied or ignored; hence, those who would thwart it
now seek to immobilize it by capturing, institutionalizing,
swallowing it up, as it were. This is particularly true in his-
tory-writing. The book market in the past two decades —
and the last decade in particular — has been almost literally
swamped with books on the so-called Negro question; the
vast majority, even when critical, acquiesce in the structure
of the social order and so the very act of criticism becomes at
the same time an act of apology.

From Woodson to Du Bois and, now that both are gone,
to those who — standing upon their shoulders — seek to carry

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on in their spirit, the best of this historiography has been
consciously part of the liberation process. Such partisanship,
and only such partisanship, makes possible an objective ac-
count of the aspirations and efforts of America’s black mil-
lions.

June 1968

Herbert Aptheker

contents

Introduction 9

Slave Guerrilla Warfare 1 1

Buying Freedom 31

Militant Abolitionism 41

Negro Casualties in the Civil War 75

Negroes in the Union Navy 113

Organizational Activities of Southern

Negroes, 1865 136

Mississippi Reconstruction and the Negro Leader,

Charles Caldwell 163

Appendix 189

Reference Notes 193

Index

249

INTRODUCTION

The Negro’s past runs through the warp and woof of the
fabric that is America. His history must be understood not only
because it is the history of some fifteen million American citizens,
but also because American life as a whole cannot be understood
without knowing that history.

This past has been clouded and obscured by distortion, omis-
sion, and, at times, by sanctimonious, patronizing sentimentality.
This methodology has mirrored and simultaneously bulwarked
the super-exploitation of the American Negro people. Denying
them a past worthy of serious study and emulation weakens their
fight for equality and freedom.

Prolonged and rigorous research is required into the still
largely untapped source material from which an over-all history
worthy of its subject may be obtained. Nothing can replace this
basic procedure in scientific investigation, and it is only on the
strength of such digging and probing, such sifting and weighing,
that the discipline of Negro historical writing will be lifted above
the level of fantasy, mythology, wish-fulfillment, and bigotry,
into the realm of fact and reality.

This book represents an attempt to contribute in that direc-
tion. The chapters, some of which appeared in condensed form
in The Journal of Negro History, Science and Society, and Op-
portunity, deal with hitherto neglected but nevertheless vitally
important subjects and personalities.

The studies of slave guerrilla warfare and of the techniques
and extent of self-purchase of freedom serve to further demon-
strate the militance and deep craving for freedom that form the
backbone of the Negro’s past. The chapter dealing with aboli-
tionism substantiates the same thesis and demonstrates, too.

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how inextricably interwoven has been the struggle for Negro
liberation with that of the general effort to preserve and extend
freedom for all Americans. It helps point up, in addition, how
indigenous and deep-rooted have been revolutionary sentiments
of the most profound and uncompromising character. It be-
comes clear from that study that the thinking of a man like John
Brown, far from being unique, epitomizes the mental process
of large segments of the American population during the pre-
Civil War years.

The chapters dealing with the contributions made by the
Negro in labor and in blood towards the winning of the Civil
War demonstrate concretely and specifically his active and vital
role in securing his own personal freedom as well as helping to
maintain the existence of the United States as a nation. By em-
ploying the microcosmic method, the studies on the Reconstruc-
tion epoch try to make clear the fundamental democratic issues
involved during those years and the demands, organizational
activities, and types of leaders then developed by the Negro peo-
ple themselves.

Throughout the work attention is centered upon the words
and deeds of the Negro himself. As much as is possible within
a descriptive and analytical volume, the object has been to per-
mit the Negro to talk for himself. Because of the unfamiliar
nature of the subject matter and the widely dispersed and largely
unpublished character of the source material, full documentation
has been offered.

It is this writer's conviction that he who studies and absorbs
the history of the Negro people will face the future with supreme
confidence. For this history proves that, let the despoilers of
humanity do what they will, the aspirations and the struggles
of mankind continue and enture.

Of the Negro it may be said as truly as of any other oppressed
people that, in fighting for a better world, they had nothing to
lose but their chains. This has forged within their hearts a yearn-
ing for peace and security, a knowledge of the necessity for unity,
and a contempt for the oppressor which constitute a progressive
potential of the utmost significance to the United States.

It is a duty and a necessity to resurrect and treasure the precious
heritage that the Negro people have bestowed upon America.

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

Some definitions of the word "maroon” are quite revealing.
As a noun the word is said to refer to "One of a class of fugitive
negroes living upon a West Indian island or in Dutch Guiana”;
while as an intransitive verb it is defined as follows: “In the
southern part of the United States, to camp out in a wild or
secluded place as a recreation.” 1

The facts, however, do not justify the limited regional appli-
cation given this word as a noun. On the contrary, an ever-
present feature of our own slave South was the existence of
groups of outlawed fugitive slaves. The existence of these
American maroons not only represented a serious monetary
loss to the slaveholding class but, in addition, they served as
sources of insubordination. They offered, too, havens for fugi-
tives, served as bases for marauding expeditions against nearby
plantations and, at times, supplied leadership to planned
uprisings.

Public notice of these maroon communities was taken only
when they were accidentally uncovered or when their activities
became so dangerous to the slavocracy that their destruction
was felt to be necessary. Evidence of the existence of very many
such communities in various places and at various times, from
1672 to 1864, has been found. The mountainous, forested, or
swampy regions of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia,
Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama ( in order
of importance) appear to have been the favorite haunts for these
black Robin Hoods. At times a settled life, rather than a
belligerent and migratory one, was aimed at, as is evidenced by
the fact that these maroons built homes, maintained families,
raised cattle, and pursued agriculture, but this type of life
appears to have been exceptional.

The most noted of such communities was that located in

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the Dismal Swamp between Virginia and North Carolina.
About two thousand Negroes, fugitives, or the descendants of
fugitives, lived in this area. They carried on a regular, if illegal,
trade with white people living on the borders of the swamp.*
Such settlements may have been more numerous than available
evidence would indicate, for their occupants aroused less excite-
ment and less resentment than the guerrilla outlaws.

The activities of maroons in Virginia in 1672 approached a
point of rebellion so that a law was passed urging and rewarding
the hunting down and killing of these outlaws. An item of
November 9, 1691, notices the depredations caused by a slave,
Mingoe, from Middlesex county, Virginia, and his unspecified
number of followers in Rappahannock county. These Negroes
not only took cattle and hogs, but, what was more important,
they had recently stolen "two guns, a Carbyne & other things.” 8

In June, 1711, the inhabitants of the colony of South Carolina
were kept "in great fear and terror" by activities of “several
Negroes [who] keep out, armed, and robbing and plundering
houses and plantations." These men were led by a slave named
Sebastian, who was finally tracked down and killed by an Indian
hunter. 4 Lieutenant-Governor Gooch of Virginia wrote to the
Lords of Trade, June 29, 1729, “of some runaway Negroes
beginning a settlement in the Mountains & of their being
reclaimed by their Master." He assured the Lords that the militia
was being trained to “prevent this for the future.” 5

In September, 1733, the governor of South Carolina offered
a reward of £20 alive and £10 dead for “Several Runaway
Negroes who are near the Congerees, & have robbed several of
the Inhabitants thereabouts.” The Notchee Indians offered,
April, 1744, to aid the government of South Carolina in main-
taining the subordination of its slave population. Three months
later, July 5, 1744, Governor James Glen applied "for the
assistance of some Notchee Indians in order to apprehend some
runaway Negroes, who had sheltered themselves in the Woods,
and being armed, had committed disorders. . .

The number of runaways in Georgia and South Carolina in
1765 was exceedingly large. This led to fears of a general rebel-
lion, and at least one considerable camp of maroons was
destroyed that year by military force. A letter from Charleston

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

*3

of August 16, 1768, told of a battle with a body of maroons,
“a numerous collection of outcast mulattoes, mustees, and free
negroes.” 7

Governor James Habersham of Georgia learned in December,
1771, “that a great number of fugitive Negroes had committed
many Robberies and insults between this town [Savannah] and
Ebenezer and that their Numbers were now Considerable [and]
might be expected to increase daily.” Indian hunters and
militiamen were employed to blot out this menace. Yet the same
danger was present in Georgia in the summer of 1772. Depre-
dations and arson were frequent, and again the militia saw
service. 8 A letter from Edmund Randolph to James Madison
of August 30, 1782, discloses somewhat similar trouble in Vir-
ginia. At this time it appears that “a notorious robber,” a
white man, had gathered together a group of about fifty men,
Negro and white, and was terrorizing the community. 9

The British had combated the revolutionists’ siege of Savan-
nah with the aid of a numerous body of Negro slaves who
served under the inspiration of a promised freedom. The defeat
of the British crushed the hopes of these Negroes. They fled,
with their arms, called themselves soldiers of the King of
England, and carried on a guerrilla warfare for years along the
Savannah river. Militia from Georgia and South Carolina,
together with Indian allies, successfully attacked some Negro
settlements in May, 1786, with resulting heavy casualties. 10 But
this by no means ended the danger. For in March, 1787, a
slaveholder of Purrysburgh, S. C., informed his state legislator
of repeated attacks by slave guerrillas. They had, he declared,
ransacked his own plantation and wounded his overseer. The
legislator was warned that unless the state immediately took
suppressive measures, “the matter may become of too serious
a nature, as hereafter to give ourselves farther trouble about
the matter more than quietly submit our F amili es to be sacri-
ficed by them & probably by our own indoor Domestics.”

The recipient of this disquieting note wrote the next day to
his colleague from St. Peter’s Parish, Charleston, that South
Carolina had to do something, "even if we follow the example
of the Georgians by a Proclamation so much per head — dead
or alive.” By March 20, Governor Thomas Pinckney officially

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called the situation to the attention of the legislature and
submitted pertinent letters describing its gravity. 1 he same day
a joint committee of both Houses reported, I hat his Excellency
the Governor be requested immediately to adopt the most
decisive and effectual measures to extirpate the Runaway
Negroes committing depredation in the Southern part of this
State.” It added its recommendation that the governor be
authorized “to Issue a Proclamation offering a reward of Ten
pounds sterling for each of said Negroes killed or taken in
this state” and that the legislature agree to “provide for any
Expence that may be incurred in the prosecution of this
business.”

From an “Account of expenditures attending the dispersing
the Fugitive Slaves near Purrysburg” it appears that the State
militia, assisted by Catawba Indians, under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hutson, used up over two hundred
and forty pounds to pay for “this business,” of which forty
pounds went to “Capt. Patton for scalps taken by Catawbas
under his command,” while a total of twenty pounds were
earned by Jacob Winkler and Nathaniel Tettler for the same
tasteful trophies.

Funds for this purpose were appropriated by the legislature
during the end of February, 1788. In the resolution providing
this special money appears the interesting information that the
militia in performing their duties was “carried out of this into
the State of Georgia . .

Evidence is present of similar proceedings in the spring of
1793. There exists a request to the legislature, dated April 19,
for payment of one Captain William Harley and eighteen men
who had been “employed by order of the Governor against
the Negro fugitives.” These men had required fifteen days for
the performance of their task, and the captain received his
payment In addition, there is a receipt, of the same date,
acknowledging the payment of thirty pounds to twenty-two
other men (two sergeants and twenty privates), for seven days'
service in “an expedition against runaway negroes.”

Captain Harley was a busy man that season as was demon-
strated by an order upon the state's treasurer, signed by Gover-
nor Moultrie, on May 20, 1793, to pay the captain $245 for

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

himself and twelve men. This money was paid to compensate
the labors of the thirteen individuals who “from the 29th
April to the 17th May . . . were raised & sent in pursuit of a
Number of armed fugitive Slaves, in the parishes of St. John,
St. James, Goosecreek, fc St. George.” 11

Chesterfield and Charles City counties, Virginia, were
troubled by maroons in November, 1792. At least one white
man was killed while tracking them down. Ten of the runaways
were finally captured, with the aid of dogs. 12 The neighborhood
of Wilmington, North Carolina, was harassed in June and
July, 1795, by “a number of runaway Negroes, who in the
daytime secrete themselves in the swamps and woods .... at
night committed various depredations of the neighbouring
plantations.” They killed at least one white man, an overseer,
and severely wounded another. About five of these maroons
including the leader, known as the General of the Swamps,
were killed by hunting parties. It was hoped that “these well-
timed severities” would “totally break up this nest of miscreants
—At all events, this town has nothing to apprehend as the
citizens keep a strong and vigilant night guard.” Within two
weeks of this first report, of July 3, the capture and execution
of four more runaways was reported. On July 17 it was believed
that only one leader and a “few deluded followers” were still
at large. 13

Petitions for state aid presented in 1800 to the South Carolina
legislature, by the widows of two overseers, Adam Culliatt and
Joseph C. Brown, declare that both men were killed in October,
1799, by slave outlaws. Mrs. Culliatt stated that her husband lost
his life while a member of a party commanded by a Captain
Paul Hamilton, “in pursuit of a party of negroes who had
recently committed a murder in the neighborhood” of Jackson-
borough, while Mrs. Brown declared that her husband and
another overseer were “in search of a gang of runaway negroes. . .
who infested” St. Paul's parish, and that both men were shot
by these fugitives. 14

The existence of a maroon camp in the neighborhood of
Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in May, 1802, is indicated by
the fact that the plots and insubordination uncovered among
the slave population at that time were attributed to the agitation

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of an outlawed Negro, Tom Cooper, who "has got a camp in one
of the swamps." In March, 1811, a runaway community in a
swamp in Cabarrus county, North Carolina, was wiped out.
These maroons "had bid defiance to any force whatever, and
were resolved to stand their ground." In the attack two Negro
women were captured, two Negro men killed, and another

wounded. 15

The close proximity of the weakly governed Spanish territory
of East Florida persistently disturbed the equanimity of Ameri-
can slaveholders. Many of the settlers in that region, moreover,
were Americans, and they, aided by volunteers from the United
States, raised the standard of revolt in 1810, the aim being
American annexation. 16 In the correspondence of Lieutenant
Colonel Thomas Smith and Major Flournoy, both of the United
States Army and both actively on the side of the rebels or
“patriots” in the Florida fighting, and of Governor Mitchell
of Georgia, there are frequent references to the fleeing of
American slaves into Florida, where they helped the Indians
in their struggle against the Americans and the patriots. A
few examples may be cited.

Smith told General Pinckney, July SO, 1812, of fresh Indian
depredations in Georgia and of the escape of about eighty
slaves. He planned to send troops against them, for “The safety
of our frontier I conceive requires this course. They have, I
am informed, several hundred fugitive slaves from the Carolinas
and Georgia at present in their Town & unless they are checked
soon they will be so strengthened by desertions from Georgia &
Florida that it will be found troublesome to reduce them.” And
it was troublesome. In a letter to Governor Mitchell of August
21, 1812, Smith declared, “The blacks assisted by the Indians
have become very daring.” In September, further slave escapes
were reported from Georgia. On September 11, a baggage train
under Captain Williams and twenty men, going to the support
of Colonel Smith, was attacked and routed, Williams himself
being killed by Indians and maroons. In January, 1813, further
escapes were reported, and, in February, Smith wrote of battles
with Negroes and Indians and the destruction of a Negro fort.
One Georgia participant in this fighting, Colonel Daniel New-

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

*7

man, declared the maroon allies of the Indians were “their
best soldiers.” 17

The refusal of the Senate of the United States, at the moment,
to sanction occupation of East Florida, finally led to a lull in
the fighting. By 1816, however, the annoyance and danger from
runaway slaves again served as justification for American inter-
vention. With southern complaints ringing in its ears 18 the
administration dispatched, in July, United States troops with
Indian allies under Colonel Duncan Clinch against the main
stronghold of the maroons, the well-stocked Negro fort on
Appalachicola Bay. After a siege of ten days a cannon shot
totally destroyed the fort and annihilated two hundred and
seventy men, women and children. But forty souls survived. 19

Another major expedition against a maroon community was
carried out in 1816. This occurred near Ashepoo, South Carolina.
Governor David R. William's remarks concerning this in his
message of December, 1816, merit quotation:

A few runaway negroes, concealing themselves in the swamps and
marshes contiguous to Combahee and Ashepoo rivers, not having been
interrupted in their petty plundering for a long time, formed the
nucleus, round which all the ill-disposed and audacious near them gath-
ered, until at length their robberies became too serious to be suffered
with impunity. Attempts were then made to disperse them, which either
from insufficiency of numbers or bad arrangement, served by their
failure only to encourage a wanton destruction of property. Their new
forces now became alarming, not less from its numbers than from its
arms and ammunition with which it was supplied. The peculiar situ-
ation of the whole of that portion of our coast, rendered access to them
difficult, while the numerous creeks and water courses through the
marshes around the islands, furnished them easy opportunities to
plunder, not only the planters in open day, but the inland coasting
trade also without leaving a trace of their movements by which they
could be pursued. ... I therefore ordered Major-General Youngblood
to take the necessary measures for suppressing them, and authorized
him to incur the necessary expenses of such an expedition. This was
immediately executed. By a judicious employment of the militia under
his command, he either captured or destroyed the whole body . 20

The Norfolk Herald of June 29, 1818, referred to the serious
damages occasioned by a group of some thirty runaway slaves.

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acting together with white men, in Princess Anne county,
Virginia. It reported, too, the recent capture of a leader and
“an old woman” member of the outlaws. In November of that
year maroon activities in Wake county. North Carolina, became
serious enough to evoke notice from the local press which
advised “the patrol to keep a strict look out." Later an attack
upon a store “by a maroon banditti of negroes” led by “the
noted Andey, alias Billy James, better known by the name of
Abellino,” was repulsed by armed citizens. The paper believed
that the death of at least one white man, if not more, might
accurately be placed at their hands. 21 The Raleigh Register of
December 18, 1818, printed Governor Branch's proclamation
offering $250 reward for the capture of seven specific outlaws and
$100 for Billy James alone. There is evidence that, in this same
year, maroons were active in Johnston county, in that state, and
one expedition against them resulted in the killing of at least
one Negro. 22

Expeditions against maroons took place in Williamsburg
county, South Carolina, in the summer of 1819. Three slaves
were killed, several captured and one white was wounded.
Similar activities occurred in May, 1820, in Gates county, North
Carolina. A slave outlaw, Harry, whose head had been assessed
at $200, was killed by four armed whites. “It is expected that
the balance of Harry's company [which had killed at least one
white man] will very soon be taken.” 23

Twelve months later there was similar difficulty near George-
town, South Carolina, resulting in the death of one slaveholder
and the capture of three outlaws. 24 The activities of considerable
maroon groups in Onslow, Carteret, and Bladen counties. North
Carolina, aided by some free Negroes, assumed the proportions
of rebellion in the summer of 1821. There were plans for joint
action between these outlaws and the field slaves against the
slaveholders. Approximately three hundred members of the
militia of the three counties saw service for about twenty-five
days in August and September. About twelve of these men were
wounded when two companies of militia accidentally fired upon
each other. The situation was under control by the middle of
September, although the militia men “did not succeed in
apprehending all the runaways & fugitives [still] they did good

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

*9

by arresting some, and driving others off, and suppressing the
spirit of insurrection.” 26 A newspaper item of 1824 discloses
that the “prime mover” of this trouble, a Negro called Isam,
“alias General Jackson,” was among those who escaped at the
time, for he is there reported as dying from lashes publicly
inflicted at Cape Fear, North Carolina. 20

In the summer of 1822 activity among armed runaway slaves
was reported from Jacksonborough, South Carolina. Three were
executed on July 19. In August Governor Bennett offered a
reward of two hundred dollars for the capture of about twenty
maroons in the same region. It is possible that these Negroes
had been enlisted in the far-flung conspiracy of Denmark Vesey,
uncovered and crushed in June, 1822. 27

The Norfolk Herald of May 12, 1823, contains an unusually
full account of maroons under the heading “A Serious Subject.”
It declares that the citizens of the southern part of Norfolk
county, Virginia,

have for some time been kept in a state of mind peculiarly harassing
and painful, from the too apparent fact that their lives are at the mercy
of a band of lurking assassins, against whose fell designs neither the
power of the law, or vigilance, or personal strength and intrepidity,
can avail. These desperadoes are runaway negroes (commonly called
outlyers). . . . Their first object is to obtain a gun and ammunition, as
well to procure game for subsistence as to defend themselves from at-
tack, or accomplish objects of vengeance.

Several men had already been killed by these former slaves;
one, a Mr. William Walker, very recently. This aroused great
fear. “No individual after this can consider his life safe from
the murdering aim of these monsters in human shape. Every
one who has haply rendered himself obnoxious to their ven-
geance, must, indeed, calculate on sooner or later falling a
victim” to them. Indeed, one slaveholder had received a note
from these amazing fellows suggesting it would be healthier
for him to remain indoors at night— and he did.

A large body of militia was ordered out to exterminate these
outcasts and “thus relieve the neighbouring inhabitants from
a state of perpetual anxiety and apprehension, than which
nothing can be more painful.” During the next few weeks there
were occasional reports 28 of the killing or capturing of outlaws.

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culminating June 25, 1823, in the capture of the leader himself,
Bob Ferebee, who, it was declared, had been an outlaw for six
years He was executed on July 25. In October of this same year
runaway Negroes near Pineville, South Carolina, were attacked.
Several were captured, and at least two, a woman and a child,
were killed. One of the maroons was decapitated, and his head
stuck on a pole and publicly exposed as “a warning to vicious

slaves." 38 _ .

In December, 1825, at a cost of $700, the state of South

Carolina purchased, from a Mrs. Perrin of Richland County,
her slave Royal, and freed him. This action was taken as the
result of a petition of the previous year from eighty-one planters
of the lady's neighborhood.

It may be assumed that only extraordinary services to the
master class would evoke two such tributes and this assumption
is correct The planters' petition reveals, “It is now some years
since Mr. Ford, a highly worthy and respected citizen of our
State, was murdered somewhere not far from Georgetown,
So[uth] Carolina], by a negroe belonging to Mr. Carroll of
Richland District named Joe (or Forest)." A reward was offered
by the relatives of the deceased and by the Governor of the
State, but the rebel was not taken. The petition continues:

He was so cunning and artful as to elude pursuit and so daring and
bold at particular times when no force was at hand as to put everything
at defiance. Emboldened by his successes and his seeming good fortune
he plunged deeper and deeper [into] wild crime until neither fear
nor danger could deter him from threatening and then from executing
a train of mischiefs we believe quite without parallel in this country.

Most of the runaways flew to his Camp and he soon became their
head and their life. He had the art and the address to inspire en-
thusiasm. Such was his cunning that but few of the enterprises for

mischief planned by himself failed of success. We believe that nearly
four years have now elapsed since the murder of Mr. Ford, the whole

of which time, until his merited death, was marked by Crimes, by

Mischiefs and by the desemination of notions the most dangerous
among the blacks in our Sections of the County (such as were calculated
in the end to produce insubordination and insurrection) . . . We were
compelled as we conceived from the necessity of the case to associate
together for the purposes of domestic safety and for the object of im-
pressing our blacks with proper fear by the power of wholesome ex-

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21

ample. . . .We organized several companies of Infantry from among
our Association. . . .

Yet, as the planters state, this force was unable to cope with
"Joe (or Forest)," and his followers. Here entered Mrs. Perrin's
favorite slave, Royal, who recommended strategy and offered
to trick the partisan and his band into an ambush for slaughter
by the planters. And, indeed. Royal “managed to decoy those
who, we had long sought . . . Soon perceiving their mistake and
the danger of all before them, they instantly attempted to defend
themselves with well charged musquets but at a single well
directed fire from the party of whites in the Boat Joe with
three of his party fell dead. The rest of the gang of runaways
were subsequently either killed in pursuit, hung for attempts
to murder or were frightened to their respective homes."

Thus did Royal gain his own freedom-of body, if not of
mind. 30

A maroon community consisting of men, women, and children
was broken up by a three-day attack made by armed slaveholders
of Mobile county, Alabama, in June, 1827. The Negroes
had been outlaws for years and lived entirely by plundering
neighboring plantations. At the time of the attacks the Negroes
were constructing a stockade fort. Had this been finished it
was believed that field slaves thus informed would have joined
them. Cannon would then have been necessary for their destruc-
tion. The maroons made a desperate resistance, “fighting like
Spartans." Three were killed, others wounded, and several
escaped. Because of the poor arms of the Negroes but one
white was slightly wounded. 31

In November, 1827, a Negro woman returned to her master
in New Orleans after an absence of sixteen years. She told of
a maroon settlement some eight miles north of the city containing
about sixty people. A drought prevailed at the moment so it
was felt that “the uncommon dryness . . . has made those retreats
attainable . . . and we are told there is another camp about the
head of the bayou Bienvenu. Policy imperiously calls for a
thorough search, and the destruction of all such repairs, when-
ever found to exist." 32

In the summer of 1829 “a large gang of runaway negroes,
who have infested the Parishes of Christ Church and St. James

22

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rs Cl for several months, and committed serious depredations
on the properties of the planters” was accidentally discovered
by a party of deer hunters. One of the Negroes was wounded
and four others were captured. Several others escaped, but the
Charleston Mercury hoped the citizens would "not cease their
exertions until the evil shall be effectually removed."®*

In the same year twenty-three planters of the parish of
Christ Church in South Carolina presented a petition to the
state legislature which is an illuminating document in many
respects and is particularly revealing as to the incessant activi-
ties of maroons.

The specific prayer of the petitioners was for the repeal of
a law enacted by the state in December 1821, entitled An Act
to increase the punishment inflicted on persons convicted of
murdering any slave." This provided that if any person did
‘‘wilfully, maliciously, and deliberately murder any slave [he]
on conviction shall suffer death without the benefit of clergy ,
while if the killing were done “on sudden heat and passion,
the penalty was to be a fine of not over $500, and imprisonment
for not over six months.

These slaveholders declared that “from the vicinity of their
property to Charleston, from their parish being surrounded by
navigable water leading directly to it, and occasioning much
intercourse with that City, and from the great Northern road
passing through their parish in its whole length [they] are
peculiarly exposed to the great evil of absconding slaves and
their ruinous depredations.*' They went on to say that they were

. . . aware that these Causes have long combined to produce this evil,
but they have within these latter Years only, found it operate to an
extent producing great irregularity and disorder among their Slaves,
and now leading directly to a state of insubordination and danger affect-
ing the lives of individuals and the security of property.

This state of things is operating, your Memorialists believe, in every
part of the lower and middle divisions of the State as they are informed
by the inhabitants of other parishes and it cries aloud for the inter-
ference of your Honourable House. They think it unnecessary to say
anything of the unceasing efforts made by enthusiasts out of Carolina,
to poison the minds of our domestic people, these must be met in a
different way, and cannot hurt us if the Southern States are true to

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE 23

themselves; but they would distinctly state their conviction, that great
mischief has been already done, and is daily increasing by the misguided
zeal and unguarded movements, acts and conversation of persons within
our own State, owning little or none of the property they so earnestly
and so unceasingly crave to meddle with, yet living and supported by
the agriculture of the country.

In developing this interesting allusion to anti-slavery feeling
among the poorer folk of South Carolina, the planters went on
to state that its danger had been accentuated by the then
current economic depression. They pointed out that “large
bodies of negroes'* had been sold to traders in Charleston
because of this depression, and that there followed an “unre-
strained intercourse of these [slaves] with free blacks and low and
worthless white people [and this] infused into the minds of
negroes ideas of insubordination and of emancipation, which
they carry with them when sold into every part of the State . . ."

Returning to the law of 1821 the memorialists held that
those who enacted it

. . . were not practical Southern planters . . . [nor] Southern legisla-
tors [I] for if they had been, they would have known that changing the
nature of the penalties in the case of negroes— that inflicting the pun-
ishment of death on a white man for killing a slave, who is a property ,
instead of exacting a fine for the loss of that property [emphases in
original — H.A.] was placing the white inhabitants on a footing which
would not be admitted by Juries of our Countrymen, and hence that
the penalty would never be inflicted in any case however enormous. . .

These planters asserted their beliefs that “the very effect of
the law ... is to produce upon the part of the negro, such acts
of violence, as call immediate vengeance down upon him.*' Let
us have, they begged, the undiluted laws of our forefathers,
“for the old laws were practical, reasonable and therefore carried
into execution." This act of 1821 with its “peculiar fitness
to impress upon the minds of Slaves (to whom it is too often
read), that they are now on a different footing as regards their
owners and the whites, from what they formerly were; a footing
approaching nearer to a State of emancipation from their
authority," leads “of course to a State of unrestrained liberty
and licentiousness," while its provisions tend to restrain the
whites from dealing with this “State" in a befitting fashion!

TO BE FREE

This alleged condition "of security in crime brings about

greater and yet greater atrocities, hence the depredations upon our
property, crops and catde, have been enormous. . . Such negroes as have
in consequence of this combination of fatal circumstances remained out
for Years, at length cease to respect the whites, become reckless of con-
sequences and choosing their opportunities during the sickly season
of the Year when individuals are alone and supposed to be defense-
less, attack them with a view to destroy them.

Let us, continued the petitioners, cite a few examples to
demonstrate these facts:

In 1822 a negro belonging to the Estate of Spring, . . . absconded
and came into the parish [of Christ Church] as a runaway. In 1824
a fellow belonging to Mr. Legare joined him as a runaway was Shot and
killed in his company— In 1825 a family five in number purchased at
the sale of A. Vanderhorst, absconded and joined the same ringleader.
They continued out until October last [1828], when the Children sur-
rendered (one having been born in the woods) the father and mother
having been both shot and killed— In 1827 three Negroes belonging to
a Parishioner’s Estate returned in like manner after the sale of his effects
as runaways. One of them in January last [1829] snapped a gun
heavily loaded with Slugs at one of your Memorialists, who met him in
the woods and immediately shot the negro. Another of these three
negroes in October last attacked another of your Memorialists with a
knife fifteen inches long, stabbed him in the hand, and would have cut
his throat, but for assistance rendered in time to save him. In 1828,
runaway slaves were collected from various parts of the Parish, one was
killed upon the spot, and another severely wounded for the second
time and taken, in January last eighteen slaves the property of your
Memorialists went off under their driver and of these one fellow has
been shot and killed, while the house of the owner has been pillaged
by his own Slaves, ten of whom are still out in a neighboring parish. . . .
[This condition is] no longer to be tolerated or borne with — one negro
taken some months ago, declared on his trial, that he had in three weeks
destroyed Forty head of Cattle, and many of your Memorialists are
altogether prevented from keeping Stock of any Kind, from these causes,
after having had large gangs of cattle, sheep and hogs destroyed.* 4

Maroons were important factors in causing slave insubordi-
nation in Sampson, Bladen, Onslow, Jones, New Hanover and
Dublin counties. North Carolina, from September through
December, 1830. Citizens complained that their “slaves are

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

25

becoming almost uncontrollable. They go and come when and
where they please, and if an attempt is made to correct them
they immediately fly to the woods and there continue for
months and years committing grievous depredations on our
Cattle, hogs and Sheep."*® One of these fugitive slaves, Moses,
who had been out for two years, was captured in November!
From him was elicited the information that an uprising was
imminent, that the conspirators “had arms & ammunition
secreted, that they had runners or messengers to go between
Wilmington, Newbern & Elizabeth City to ‘carry word’ & report
to them, that there was a camp in Dover Swamp of 30 or 40-
another about Gastons Island, on Price’s Creek, several on
Newport River, several near Wilmington.” Arms were found
in the place named by Moses

in possession of a white woman living in a very retired situation— also
some meat, hid away & could not be accounted for— a child whom the
party [of citizens] found a little way from the house, said that his mamy
dressed victuals every day for 4 or 5 runaways, & shewed the spot. . .
where the meat was then hid & where it was found— the place or camp
in Dover was found, a party of neighbours discovered the camp, burnt
11 houses, and made such discoveries, as convinced them it was a place
of rendezvous for numbers (it is supposed they killed several of the
negroes). 80

Newspaper accounts referred to the wholesale shooting of
fugitives. In 1830 the Roanoke Advertiser stated: “The inhabi-
tants of Newbern being advised of the assemblage of sixty armed
slaves in a swamp in their vicinity, the military were called out,
and surrounding the swamp, killed the whole party.” A later
item, dated Wilmington, January 7, 1831, declared, “There has
been much shooting of negroes in this neighborhood recently,
in consequence of symptoms of liberty having been discovered
among them.” It is of interest to note that Richmond papers,
on receiving the first reports of Nat Turner’s slave revolt of
August, 1831, asked, concerning the rebels, “Were they connected
with the desperadoes who harassed N. Carolina last year?’’* 7

In June 1836, there was mention that “a band of runaway
negroes in the Cypress Swamp” near New Orleans “had been
committing depredations.” The next year, in July, was reported
the killing of an outlaw slave leader. Squire, near the same

2 6 TO BE FREE

city whose band, it was felt, was responsible for the deaths
of several white men. Squire’s career had lasted three years. A
guard of soldiers was sent to the swamp for his body, which
was exhibited for several days in the public square of the city. 33

The year 1837 also saw the start of the Florida or Seminole
War which was destined to drag on until 1843. This war,
“conducted largely as a slave-catching enterprise for the benefit
of the citizens of Georgia and Florida” was, before its termina-
tion, to take an unknown number of Indian and Negro lives
together with the lives of fifteen hundred white soldiers and the
expenditure of twenty million dollars. The Indians had at the
beginning of hostilities about 1,650 warriors and 250 Negro
fighters. The latter, it was reported, were “the most formidable
foe, more blood-thirsty, active, and revengeful, than the
Indian.” 39

Armed runaways repulsed an attack near Wilmington, North
Carolina, in January, 1841, after killing one of the whites. A
posse captured three of the Negroes and lodged them in the
city jail. One escaped, but two were taken from the prison and
lynched. 40 Late in September two companies of militia were
dispatched in search of a body of maroons some 45 miles north
of Mobile, Alabama. “It is believed that these fellows have for
a long time been in the practice of theft and arson, both in
town and country ... A force from above was scouring down,
with bloodhounds, &c, to meet the Mobile party.” A month later
frequent attacks upon white men were reported from Terrebonne
Parish, Louisiana. 41

In the summer of 1841 serious difficulty arose in what is now
Oklahoma and was then known as Indian Territory. A contem-
porary source declared that “some 600 negroes” formerly from
Florida, as well as additional runaways from among the slaves
of Choctaws, Cherokees and white planters, uniting “with a
few Indians, and perhaps a few white men” had associated
themselves together “in the fastnesses west of Arkansas." They
were engaged in hunting buffalo.

[They] built a very tolerable fort with logs, surrounded with a ditch,
to protect themselves from all dangers! They caught but few buffalo,
and therefore to supply their wants, invaded the possession of the Choc-

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

*7

taws and carried off cattle, poultry, grain &c. The Choctaws followed,
but finding their numbers and fortifications an overmatch, they retired
and sent to Fort Gibson for the U. States dragoons. . . three companies
of dragoons [were sent] but after arriving upon the Red river, he [their
commander] found their entrenchments too strong, and their number
too great to venture an attack. He accordingly sent to Fort Towson and
was reinforced with a fine company of infantry and a couple of pieces
of cannon.

The cannon were shortly brought to bear upon the works and soon
made the splinters fly and the log move so queerly, that the refugees,
at a signal rushed outside of their fortifications and began to form
upon the prairie in front of their works. . . [The] gallant dragoons
charged upon them at full gallop. The carnage that ensued is repre-
sented as terrific— the dragoons routed them in all directions, and, after
putting large numbers to the sword, succeeded in capturing the whole
body! The conduct of the dragoons is represented as worthy of all com-
mendation as regards both skill and bravery. The bravery and numbers
of the refugees availed absolutely nothing against the irresistible charge
of the mounted dragoons.

This decisive blow will give security to that exposed portion of our
frontier and convince the refugee negroes and Indians that our dragoons
may not be trifled with. The loss of the dragoons was unknown to our
informant — he said an express brought the news to the fort.

Notwithstanding this, however, the next year in the same
area, according to the statement of two visiting Friends, about
two hundred fugitive slaves of Creek and Cherokee masters were
causing “much excitement, and a posse was sent after them

Several armed planters near Hanesville, Mississippi, in Feb-
ruary, 1844, set an ambush for maroons who had been exceed-
ingly troublesome. Six Negroes, “part of the gang,” were
trapped, but three escaped. Two were wounded and one was
killed. In November, 1846, about a dozen armed slaveholders
surprised “a considerable gang of runaway negroes” in St. Landry
Parish, Louisiana. The maroons refused to surrender and fled.
Two Negroes, a man and a woman, were killed, and two
Negro women were “badly wounded.” The others escaped. 43

Joshua R. Giddings, the famous fighting Ohio Congressman,
referred to the flight in September, 1850, of some three hundred
former Florida maroons from their abode in present Oklahoma
to Mexico. This was said to have been accomplished after the

TO BE FREE

28

Negroes had driven off Geek Indians sent to oppose their
exodus. Somewhat later the Houston, Texas Telegraph reported
that fifteen hundred former American slaves were aiding the
Comanchee Indians of Mexico in their fighting. Five hundred
of these Negroes were from Texas. Giddings referred, too, to
unsuccessful expeditions by Texas slaveholders in 1853 into
Mexico for the purpose of recovering fugitive Negroes, and
declared that at the time he was writing (1858) maroons in
southern Florida were again causing trouble. Frederick Law
Olmsted, one of the best known journalists of this period, cited
evidence of maroon troubles in the 1850’s in Virginia. Louisiana,
and northern Alabama. 44

A letter of August 25, 1856, to Governor Thomas Bragg of
North Carolina, signed by Richard A. Lewis and twenty-one
other citizens, informed him of a "very secure retreat for
runaway negroes" in a large swamp between Bladen and
Robeson counties. There "for many years past, and at this
time, there are several runaways of bad and daring character-
destructive to all kinds of Stock and dangerous to all persons
living by or near said swamp.” Slaveholders attacked these
Negroes on August 1, 1856, but accomplished nothing and
saw one of their own number killed. “The negroes ran off
cursing and swearing and telling them to come on, they were
ready for them again." The Wilmington Journal of August 14
mentioned that these runaways "had cleared a place for a
garden, had cows, &c in the swamp.” Mr. Lewis and his friends
were "unable to offer sufficient inducement for negro hunters
to come with their dogs unless aided from other sources. The
Governor suggested that magistrates be requested to call
for the militia, but whether this was done or not is unknown. 45

A runaway camp was destroyed, and four Negroes, including
a woman, captured near Bovina, Mississippi, in March, 1857.
A similar event, resulting in the wounding of three maroons,
occurred in October, 1859, in Nash County, North Carolina.
An “organized camp of white men and negroes” was held
responsible for a slave conspiracy, involving whites, which was
uncovered in Talladega County, Alabama, in August, I860. 49

The years of the Civil War witnessed a considerable accen-
tuation in the struggle of the Negro people against enslave-

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE 29

menu This was as true of maroon activity as it was generally.
There were reports of depredations committed by "a gang of
runaway slaves” acting together with two whites along the
Comite River, Louisiana, early in 1861. An expedition was
set "on foot to capture the whole party.” A runaway commu-
nity near Marion, South Carolina, was attacked in June, 1861.
There were no casualties, however, the slave-hunters capturing
but two Negro children, twelve guns, and and one axe. 47

The appearance of Federal troops always resulted in Negroes
flocking to their lines. Among these people contemporaries
noticed that some had lived for years as fugitive denizens of
the surrounding countryside. Brigadier-General Burnside, for
instance, informed Secretary of War Stanton, early in 1862,
after having just entered Newbern, North Carolina, that the
Negroes

seem to be wild with excitement and delight . . . The city is being
overrun with fugitives from the surrounding towns and plantations.
Two have reported themselves who have been in the swamps for five
years. It would be utterly impossible, if we were so disposed, to keep
them outside of our lines, as they find their way to us through the woods
and swamps from every side . 48

Confederate Brigadier-General R. F. Floyd asked Governor
Milton of Florida on April 11, 1862, to declare martial law in
Nassau, Duvar, Clay, Putnam, St. John’s and Volusia Counties,
“as a measure of absolute necessity, as they contain a nest of
traitors and lawless negroes.” 49 In October, 1862, a scouting
party of three armed whites, investigating a maroon camp
containing one hundred men, women, and children in Surry
County, Virginia, were killed by these fugitives. 50 Governor
Shorter of Alabama commissioned J. H. Clayton in January,
1863, to destroy the nests in the southeastern part of the
state of “deserters, traitors, and runaway Negroes.” 51 Colonel
Hatch of the Union Army reported in August, 1864, that “500
Union men, deserters, and negroes were . . . raiding towards
Gainsville,” Florida. The same month a Confederate officer,
John K. Jackson, declared that:

Many deserters. . .are collected in the swamps and fastnesses of Taylor,
La Fayette, Levy and other counties [in Florida], and have organized,

30

TO BE FREE

-i* n».«T T O.X” dL,T„“tZ™i; ed o»

s srwrsiS a r ~ — *■ —

of Tallahassee, Madison, and Marianna. -

A Confederate newspaper noticed similar activities in North
Carolina in 1864. It reported:

[It is] difficult to find words of description ... of the wild and terrible
consequences of the negro raids in this obscure . . . theatre of the war . .
Z t7o counties of Currituck and Camden, there are said to be from five
to s'ixhundred negroes, who are not in the regular military organization
of the Yankees, but who, outlawed and disowned by their masters, lead
the lives of banditti, roving the country with fire and committing a
sorts of horrible crimes upon the inhabitants.

This present theatre of guerrilla warfare has, at this time, a most
important interest for our authorities. It is described as a rich country. . .
and one of the most important sources of meat supplies that is now

accessible to our armies. . . •

This account ends with a broad hint that white deserters
from the Confederate Army were fighting shoulder to shoulder
with these self-emancipated Negroes. 63

The story- of America's maroons is of interest not only
because it is an important part of the history of the South and
of the Negro, but also because of the evidence it provides to
help demonstrate that the conventional picture of slavery as
a more or less delightful, patriarchal system is fallacious. The
corollary of this distortion— docile, contented slaves— is also,
of course, seriously undermined.

The ancient cliche, still reiterated, that American Negro
slavery was characterized by placidity is a colossal hoax antici-
pating fascism's technique of the “big lie" by several genera-
tions. 54

BUYING FREEDOM

Through the fabric of the American Negro people’s history
there runs like a bright thread their yearning for liberation.
"I his yearning evoked various and numerous forms of struggle in
the ante-bellum slave South: from shamming illness to destroying
tools; from poisoning masters and assassinating overseers to
self-mutilation and suicide; from flight and guerrilla warfare,
conspiracy and rebellion, to enlistment, when possible and when
liberty was the reward, in the armies and navies of the states
and the Federal government; from destroying single buildings
and entire communities by fire to the purchase of their own
bodies— to buying freedom.

This last mode of struggle, while usually unobtrusive and
rarely spectacular, nevertheless required great perseverance and
a deliberate, cool courage. Evidence establishes the fact that
thousands of Negro slaves managed to buy their freedom, or
to have it bought for them by relatives and friends. The former
case naturally provokes the question: how was a slave, another
person’s property, able to accumulate the wherewithal to pur-
chase himself?

For this to occur four conditions, besides, of course, the
Negro’s own desire, had to be present: the owner had to express
a willingness to permit the slave to buy himself; it had to be
possible for the slave to earn and to retain the money required;
it was necessary that the owner, having made possible the first
two conditions, accept in good faith from his slave the money
involved and in return present him with papers of manumis-
sion; and, finally, the possibility of manumission, in a legal
sense, and particularly manumission by self-purchase, had to
exist.

To obtain permission to attempt this undertaking and for the
slave to retain possession of his earnings once it was launched

TO BE FREE

3 «

were not easy. Nor was it unheard of that, after having agreed
to terms and having struggled and accumulated all or a large
part of the purchase price, the slave was compelled to suffer the
torture of seeing these earnings appropriated by the master, the
agreement denied or disavowed, and the extra labor gone for
nought. Again, it sometimes happened that the work and hope
of years turned to ashes with the death of the master; or
sometimes the master, for any of a number of reasons, decided
to sell the slave prior to the consummation of the agreement. 1

In certain areas the right of a slave to enter into a contract
with his master for the working out, or the purchase of, freedom
and the binding quality of this instrument upon both parties,
were legally recognized. This was true, for example, in New
England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when
agreements were entered into stating the number of years the
Negro slaves were to labor without compensation prior to
manumission. 2

This was true, also, of Virginia, both as a colony and as a
state. Thus, in the seventeenth century, a Negro named Tony
Bowze entered into a written agreement with his master, Major-
General Bennett, providing that he was to pay eight hundred
pounds of tobacco yearly to the General “and be at Liberty."
The death of the master brought an attempt to re-enslave the
Negro, but the latter “producing a note under his said Master's
hand,” providing as above specified, the Court decided that
Bowze was to remain at liberty so long as he could “Give
Security for payment of 800 lb. [of tobacco] per Annum dureing
his life . . . .” 3

Other cases involving the validity of a contract for manu-
mission by self-purchase repeatedly reached Virginia's highest
court and this ruled, in principle, in favor of the Negroes. In
1844, for example, one John D. Miles drew up the following
document:

I . . . for the sum of four hundred dollars . . . paid and contracted to be
paid to me by my negro man named Felix Smith, have, and by these
presents do manumit and set free my said negro man Felix, he serving
me faithfully for the space of six years and at the expiration of that
period he is to be and go absolutely free . . . if . . . Felix shall, before
the expiration of said six years, have well and fully paid . . . the sum

BUYING FREEDOM

33

of four hundred dollars, with interest ... his period of service shall
expire, and he is manumitted and set free by these presents, at the time
of such full payment.

When the highest court of Virginia was asked to rule on this
agreement it not only recognized its legality but declared it to
represent “an immediate, and not a future manumission.” 4

Kentucky's courts ruled in a manner similar to that of
Virginia. Occasionally, too, in that state, contracts for the
purchase of freedom were made on the part of the Negro by
white agents. Suits against these agents by Negroes were not
unknown and at times resulted in verdicts favorable to the
plaintiff. 5

Tennessee and Louisiana endowed the slave, by law, with the
power to enter into a contract for the purchase of his freedom.
The law of Tennessee, enacted in 1833, was repeatedly referred
to by that state's Supreme Court in upholding the validity of
such contracts. This formed the occasion for one of the most
remarkable pronouncements in the history of American Negro
slavery. In 1846 Judge Green, of Tennessee's Supreme Court,
declared in rendering a decision:

A slave is not in the condition of a horse ... he is made after the
image of the Creator. He has mental capacities, and an immortal prin-
ciple in his nature, that constitute him equal to his owner, but for the
accidental condition in which fortune has placed him . . . the laws . . .
cannot extinguish his high born nature, nor deprive him of many
rights which are inherent in man ... he can make a contract for his
freedom, which our laws recognize, and he can take a bequest of his
freedom, and by the same will he can take personal or real estate. 6

Under two articles of the Louisiana code slaves were “vested
with the same right of contracting as to their emancipation as
freemen are as to any other species of property,” and contracts
and suits based upon these provisions existed. 7

Everywhere in the ante-bellum United States the right of a
slave to accumulate, with his master's permission, his own per-
sonal property— or peculium— was recognized, either by law,
judicial decision, or custom. Evidence concerning this is implicit
in the material already presented on the slave's right to contract
for his own purchase, but even where this right was not acknowl-

TO BE FREE

34

edged, or specifically denied, the right to personal property was,
in fact, granted.

In South Carolina, for example, not only was this right
explicitly enunciated by its Supreme Court, but, in 1792, Chief
Justice Rutledge declared that a slave might use this personal
wealth to buy and free another slave. 8 In Maryland and the
District of Columbia courts denied the slave's right to contract
for his own purchase, but they heard many cases in which the
possession of personal property by slaves was taken for granted.®
And in North Carolina where an act of 1830 required that one
who petitioned for the manumission of a slave swear that he
had "not received in money or otherwise the price or value, or
any part thereof, of said slave,” the fact of slaves possessing, or
being able to possess, such money is assumed. 10

Certainly throughout the slave era and area (particularly in
urban communities) the hiring out of slaves, or permitting them
to drive their own bargains and requiring only the payment by
them of a fixed weekly sum, or allowing them to retain tips and
gratuities, or rewarding them with "wages” for particularly
good work, or providing them with payments for “overtime”
labor were all fairly common practices. 11 By these means, and
in other ways, 1 ® Negroes in bondage were able, from time to
time, to accumulate the resources to emancipate themselves. And
it is a fact that hundreds of slaves did buy their own, or some
loved one’s freedom, and that hundreds of others were bought
and liberated by free relatives and friends.

There are several references to large groups of Negroes who
in this way became free. It is known, for example, that up to
1826 at least two hundred and cighty-one Negroes obtained
their freedom by self-purchase or by being bought and emanci-
pated by relatives, in Kent and Baltimore counties, Maryland,
while the same source adds that “considerable numbers” like-
wise gained their freedom in Anne Arundel, Frederick, Harford,
Dorchester, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties in this state. 18

In 1829 about eighty slaves belonging to John McDonogh
of New Orleans agreed to perform extra work for him providing
this labor was credited towards earning their freedom. Within
twelve years all these Negroes thus became free. 1 * Again, of
the 7,836 Negroes sent to Africa by the American Colonization

BUYING FREEDOM

35

Society from 1817 to 1852, two hundred and four had purchased
their freedom. 15 Documentary evidence establishes the fact that
in the three Virginia towns of Richmond, Petersburg, and
Fredericksburg, the freedom of at least sixty-one Negroes was
obtained, between 1831 and 1860, by direct bargaining between
master and slave and subsequent self-purchase by the latter.
Moreover, in Richmond alone, from 1830 to 1860, free Negroes
liberated a minimum of thirty-three relatives— children, mothers,
wives, husbands— whom they had bought for that purpose. 16

A contemporary account tells us that of the eleven hundred
and twenty-nine Negroes in Cincinnati, Ohio, sometime in the
1830's, who had once been slaves, four hundred and seventy-six
had purchased themselves at an average cost of over $450,
representing a total expenditure of almost a quarter of a million
dollars. 17 Another contemporary estimate of this same phe-
nomenon for the same city is contained in the very moving
letter which the great Abolitionist, Theodore D. Weld, wrote
to a comrade, Lewis Tappan, in 1834. It merits extensive
quotation:

Of the almost 3,000 blacks in Cincinnati more than three-fourths of
the adults are emancipated slaves, who worked out their own freedom.
Many are now paying for themselves under large securities. Besides
these, multitudes are toiling to purchase their friends, who are now in
slavery.

I visited this week about 30 families, and found that some members
of more than half these families were still in bondage, and the father,
mother and children were struggling to lay up money enough to pur-
chase their freedom. I found one man who had just finished paying
for his wife and five children. Another man and wife had bought them-
selves some years ago, and have been working night and day to purchase
their children; they had just redeemed the last and had paid for them-
selves and children 1,400 dollars! Another woman had recently paid
the last instalment of the purchase money for her husband. She had
purchased him by taking in washing, and working late at night, after
going out and performing as help at hard labor. But I cannot tell half,
and must stop. After spending three or four hours and getting facts,
I was forced to stop from sheer heartache and agony. 18

Some Negroes, it is clear, devoted their entire lives to
the purchasing and liberating of others. Examples of these
heroic people may be offered. Samuel Martin, of Mississippi,

^6 TO BE FREE

who had bought his own freedom, purchased, freed, and trans-
ported to Ohio six other Negroes in 1844. John B. Meachum, a
Negro Baptist minister of St. Louis, liberated twenty of his
people in this way by 1836. 19

A remarkable Negro woman, Aletheia Turner, who had been
a domestic servant for Thomas Jefferson, devoted practically
all her earnings to this glorious work. In 1810 she had bought
and purchased herself for $1400, and by 1828 she had bought
and liberated her sister (at $850) and ten children and five
grandchildren (at a total cost of $5250), while by 1837 she
freed two more women and four more children. 20 Another Negro
woman, Jane Minor of Petersburg, Virginia, almost equaled the
record of Mrs. Turner by freeing nineteen individuals during
her lifetime. 21 The honor of being the individual who bought
and emancipated more human beings than any other person
seems to belong to John C. Stanly, a free Negro farmer and
barber of New Bern, North Carolina. The record of this man's
selflessness and doggedness reads as follows: in 1805 he bought
and freed his own wife and two children; in 1807, his brother-
in-law; in 1812, a friend; in 1813, another friend; in 1815, a
man, a woman and five children; in 1816, a woman and six
children; and between 1817 and 1818, three more women, or
a total of twenty-three emancipated people! 22

It is likely that in some of these cases a portion of the money,
if not all, required for the purchase was provided the free Negro
by the slave involved. An actual paper of manumission may be
quoted to make clear the explicit and contractual nature of
such transactions. In a deed book for the city of Petersburg,
the Negro scholar, Professor Luther P. Jackson, found the
following entry: 23

Whereas I, Armistead Harwell (a free Negro) of the county of Prince
George did in the year 1843 purchase from William W. Wynn, a Negro
named Jones Mitchell, with money furnished for that purpose by said
Jones, and upon agreement with said Negro to emancipate him. Now
therefore in pursuance of said agreement, I Armistead Harwell do
hereby manumit and set absolutely free the said Negro man slave by
name Jones Mitchell, as witness my hand and seal this 26th day of
September, 1846.

BUYING FREEDOM

37

The purchasing of the freedom of members of one's imme-
diate family occurred frequently. A few examples, culled more
or less at random, may be offered. Isaac Hunter, of Raleigh,
North Carolina, purchased his own freedom and that of his
wife and four children. For Virginia, Rosetta Hailstock thus
liberated herself, two daughters, and a son; Albert Brooks,
himself, wife, and three children; Jesse Green, wife, and four
children; Benjamin Belberry, himself and wife; a Negro known
merely as Frank, himself, wife, and three children; Samuel
Johnston, wife, and two children; and the grandfather of Monroe
Work, the late director of research at Tuskegee, purchased the
freedom of his wife and ten children. 24

At times Negroes raised this ransom money by public appeals
and lecture tours throughout the North and Mid-West. Noah
Davis, for example, a shoemaker of Fredericksburg, Virginia,
having succeeded in buying himself, set out to liberate his
wife and five children. He accomplished this not only by
twelve years of hard labor at his craft, but also by appearances
before public gatherings in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
Peter Still, a brother of the director of the Underground Rail-
road in Philadelphia, purchased his own liberty and that of
his wife and three children (at a total cost of $5,500) by three
years of hard work and addresses delivered throughout New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Lunsford Lane of North
Carolina similarly obtained the freedom of himself, wife and
seven children (at a cost of $3,500) through his own work and
mass subscriptions obtained in Massachusetts and Ohio. 25

The records of a single newspaper, the Cleveland, Ohio,
Leader, for a brief period of time, 1855-1857, will convey some
idea of the frequency of this type of activity. In June, 1855,
this paper told its readers that a Negro named Handy Mobley
had finally succeeded in purchasing his wife and seven children.
Mr. Mobley, then in New York, asked the Leader to convey his
thanks to the citizens of Cleveland where he had “raised $55 . . .
for the above purpose." The next month there was reported
the holding of a public meeting in Jefferson, Ohio, to devise
means to help a Negro resident of Youngstown, one Elick
Wood, purchase the freedom of his seven children. The citizens
appointed a committee to collect the ransom and to enter into

TO BE FREE

38

negotiations with the owner. Somewhat later the same month
the sum of $23.60 was raised at a meeting of residents of Cleve-
land to help Thomas Long free his family. In October, it was
announced that a lady of Cleveland, Ellen Wills, was seeking
to obtain sufficient funds to free her mother, a slave in Mis-
sissippi. The next month readers of the Leader learned that:
“The Rev. George Brents, formerly a slave in Paducah, Ky.,
is the father of 7 children, and is now in the city seeking means
to liberate his son, Anderson. Anderson's master has agreed
to take $1,100. In other cities he’s raised $260.”

The next year, in August, the editor reported that a Negro
woman, formerly a slave, had called on him and had explained
that she had purchased her own freedom and was now attempting
to raise funds with which to buy her husband. She had already
secured half the needed sum in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Colum-
bus. The editor concluded: “A collection in all the churches of
the city tomorrow will help lift a load from this woman’s
heart.” The same month, in 1857, another editorial told of the
efforts of one Alfred Johnson to raise money to free his wife
in Alabama, and two weeks later another editorial referred to
the arrival in Cleveland of a Mrs. Charlotte Ashe of Washington,
D. C., seeking money to rescue two of her children from bondage
in Mississippi. 26

Cases of individuals purchasing only their own freedom occur-
red frequently— too frequently for any attempt at enumeration. 27
Note should be taken, however, of the fact that several outstand-
ing figures in Negro history, in addition to those already
mentioned, became free in this manner. Among others may
be noted the great religious leaders, Andrew Bryan, Richard
Allen, and Absalom Jones; the educator, Fanny J. Coppin; a
brother of the Abolitionist, James W. C. Pennington (who held
the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Heidelberg University);
a sister-in-law of the militant fighter, Henry Highland Garnet;
the distinguished eighteenth century physician, James Derham,
and such state representatives and senators of Virginia as
Samuel P. Bolling, Joseph P. Evans, and Peter G. Morgan. 26

The record of this particular method of fighting against
enslavement is not complete without mention of the fact that
many Negroes bought loved ones and were compelled to hold

BUYING FREEDOM

39

them in a nominal type of slavery. This occurred because in
certain states at particular times laws were passed making
emancipation or manumission extremely difficult. 29 One way to
evade these laws was by free Negroes purchasing slaves and,
while exercising none of the prerogatives of a master, still main-
taining the legal fact of enslavement. Thus may one account
for the vast majority of cases of Negro slaveholders listed in
census reports. 80 This fine example of sacrifice and condemnation
of slavery has actually been seized upon by ignorant or vicious
writers and distorted into a defense of the institution of human
bondage I

This practice of purchasing freedom is of importance not
only as an interesting and revealing phase of the history of the
American Negro people, and as a method by which many among
them obtained a basic human right, but also because it was a
factor in the stimulation of the entire movement against chattel
slavery.

The activities of the Negro people themselves were funda-
mental to that movement— their flights, their newspapers, their
societies, their speakers, their individual outbreaks, their revolts
and plots were the spring and the fountain of the Abolitionist
cause. Each of these actions and agencies demonstrated the
iniquities of bondage, and the deep desire of the Negro for
liberation. And added to them is this story of courage, persist-
ence, and devotion that enabled thousands to buy their
freedom.

Such individuals were a living, fearful condemnation of the
whole evil system of enslavement. And when these individuals
took their cause to the public, as sometimes happened, few
were unmoved by their appeals. As Levi Coffin, the famous
“President” of the Underground Railroad, remarked, when one
was asked to contribute to a fund to purchase the liberty of a
dear one “it was hard to refuse, almost impossible if one brought
the case home to himself.” 81 Again, James Russell Lowell wrote
his friend, Sydney H. Gay, that though short of funds and
though opposed, in principle, to compensated emancipation,
yet “if a man comes and asks us to help him buy a wife or child,
what are we to do? . . . Such an appeal” he could not re-
fuse. 82

TO BE FREE

40

Cries such as these— ‘Help me buy my mother!” “Help me
buy my children !”— rang in the ears of many Americans a few
generations ago. They were not easily denied and not quickly
forgotten, and surely they must have helped move some to
vow that the system responsible for such pleas must be extir-
pated.

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

The crusade against chattel slavery in the United States was
one of the most profound revolutionary movements in the
world's history. It was permeated by three major schools of
thought, one of which insisted that the only proper and effica-
cious instrument for change was moral suasion; another held that
moral suasion had to be buttressed by political action; and the
third expressed a belief in the necessity for resistance in a
physical sense, in direct, militant action. Members of the last
school adopted, at times, the methods of the first two as well. 1

Among the earliest protests against American slavery may be
found the kernel of this militancy: the righteousness of the
cause for which slaves conspired and fought was acknowledged.
In the famous Germantown Quaker Protest against slavery of
1688, the authors put this question: Suppose the slaves rebel
here and now, as they have frequently done elsewhere at other
times, “will these masters and mastrisses take the sword at hand
and warr against these poor slaves, licke, we are able to
believe, some will not refuse to doe; or have these negers not
as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep
them slaves?" Ten years later, again in Pennsylvania, this time
Concord, another Quaker protest 2 against slavery, signed by
Robert Pyle, asked a similar question: Suppose our slaves do
rebel, and blood is shed? The Friend wondered “whether our
blood will cry innocent whether it will not be said you might
have let them alone."

The Grand Jury of Charles Town, South Carolina, made the

We present as a Public Grievance a certain book or Journal sign'd
by Hugh Brian, directed to ye Honble, the Speaker, and the rest of
the members of the Commons house Assembly in Charles Town, wch
we have perused and find in general, contains sundry enthusiastic

TO BE FREE

4 *

Prophecys, of the destruction of Charles Town, and deliverance of the
Negroes from their Servitude, and that by the Influence of ye said
Hugh Brian, great bodys of Negroes have assembled to gether on
pretence of religious worship. Contrary to ye laws, and destructive
of ye Peace. . . .

Other whites, Jonathan Brian, William Gilbert, and Robert
Ogle, were also dedared to possess opinions inimical to the
security of a slave society. Mr. Brian's work was suppressed
but what punishment, if an r , was meted out to the individuals
is not known. 8

Some of the literature produced just before and during the
Revolutionary War contained, as one might expect, passages
justifying, if not actually urging, attempts on the part of the
Negroes to liberate themselves by violence. The writings of
James Otis, for example, particularly his famous pamphlet
published in Boston in 1764, The Rights of the British Colonies
Asserted and Proved, excoriated the institution of slavery,
and affirmed the Negro's inalienable right to freedom. 4 The
logical deduction was plain, and did not pass unnoticed, as
John Adams testified:

Young as I was, and ignorant as I was, I shuddered at the doctrine he
taught and I have all my life shuddered, and still shudder, at the con-
sequences that may be drawn from such premises. Shall we say, that
the rights of masters and servants clash, and can be decided only by
force? I adore the ideal of gradual abolitions. But who shall decide how
fast or how slowly these abolitions shall be made ? 5

Another popular pamphlet of this year, that by the Reverend
Isaac Skillman, An Oration upon the Beauties of Liberty, or
the Essential Rights of the Americans (published in Boston in
1772 and in its fourth printing by 1773), vehemently attacked
the enslavement of the Negroes, demanded their immediate
liberation, and affirmed, “Shall a man be deem'd a rebel that
support his own rights? it is the first law of nature, and he must
be a rebel to God, to the laws of nature, and his own conscience,
who will not do it.” 6 Very much the same point was made by
the Reverend Samuel Hopkins of Newport, Rhode Island, in
a work first published in 1776. 7

From then on the action of the American colonists in waging

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

43

war for political and economic freedom was often referred to
by militant abolitionists in order to support their own views
justifying or urging Negro rebellion. One of the earliest writings
of this type was produced by a “Free Negro,” who denounced
slavery, denied the oft-repeated idea concerning his people's
“inferiority,” and demanded, 8 “Do the rights of nature cease
to be such, when a Negro is to enjoy them? Or does patriotism,
in the heart of an African, rankle into treason?”

In this same period Thomas Paine wrote from Paris to an
anonymous friend in Philadelphia concerning anti-slavery efforts
then in progress. His concluding remarks were: “We must push
this matter [Negro slavery] further on your side of the water.
I wish that a few well instructed could be sent among their
brethren in bondage; for until they are enabled to take their
own part, nothing will be done.” 9

A physician, Dr. George Buchanan, delivered a very militant
speech on July 4, 1791, at Baltimore, before a public meeting
of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
In the course of it occur these passages, spoken six weeks before
the outbreak of the great Haitian Revolution:

What then, if the fire of Liberty shall be kindled amongst them?
What, if some enthusiast in this cause shall beat to arms, and call
them to the standard of freedom? Would they fly in clouds, until their
numbers become tremendous, and threaten the country with devasta-
tion and ruin?. . .

Led on by hopes of freedom, animated by the aspiring voice of their
leader, they would soon find, that “a day, an hour of virtuous liberty,
was worth a whole eternity of bondage /' 10

With the eruption of the Haitian Revolution many people
felt called upon to declare their attitudes towards it, and some,
who gloried in the American and French Revolutions, found it
but consistent and logical to welcome that which occurred in
the West Indies. Typical of this group was the Bostonian, J. P.
Martin, who wrote in an article entitled “Rights of Black Men”:

We believe that freedom is the natural right of all rational beings,
and we know that the blacks have never voluntarily resigned that free-
dom. Then is not their cause as just as ours? . . . Let us be consistent,
Americans, if we justify our own conduct in the late glorious revolution,
let us justify those who, in a cause like ours, fight with equal bravery. 11

TO BE FREE

44

A delegate to the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of
1792, the Reverend David Rice, argued against the establish-
ment of slavery, declaring it to be “a perpetual war, with an
avowed purpose of never making peace,” and an institution
which would weaken the home front and strengthen an enemy.
He pointed to the events then taking place in the West Indies,
and declared:

There you may see the sable, let me say the brave sons of Africa,
engaged in a noble conflict with their inveterate foes. There you may
see thousands fired with a generous resentment of the greatest injuries,
and bravely sacrificing their lives on the altar of liberty . 12

A prominent resident of Connecticut went even further in
a public speech delivered two years later, for he applied the
case to the United States, itself. Warning of coming plots and
rebellions, he went on:

And when hostilities are commenced, where shall they [the slave-
holders] look for auxiliaries, in such an iniquitous warfare? Surely, no
friend to freedom and justice will dare to lend them his aid . . . Who
then can charge the negroes with injustice, or cruelty, when “they rise
in all the vigour of insulted nature/* and avenge their wrongs. What
American will not admire their exertions, to accomplish their own
deliverance ? 13

Like sentiments were occasionally printed in the press,
as the Hartford Connecticut Courant in 1796 and 1797. 14 In
the latter year, too, a Massachusetts Negro, Prince Hall, a
veteran of the Revolutionary War, a fighter against his people’s
enslavement, and a leader in the Masonic movement, expressed
admiration for the militant activities of his brothers in Haiti. 15

Early in the year 1804 a judge for the eastern district of
Georgia, Jabez Brown, Jr., created a sensation by his “inflamma-
tory” charge to the grand jury of Chatham. The jury refused to
have this charge published and bitterly condemned the judge.
A resident of Savannah wrote shortly afterwards that “Judge
Bowen s charge related to the emancipation of the Negroes; and
that he went to the length of declaring, that if the Legislature
did not, their first session, pass a law liberating all slaves, he
would put himself at the head of the Negroes and effect it,
though at the expense of the lives of every white inhabitant of

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

45

the State.” In May the Judge was dismissed from office and
imprisoned on a charge of inciting servile insurrection, but
early in June he was released into the custody of his father, on
condition that he be sent out of the state. He was— to Rhode
Island— but, “he still swears vengeance against the white people
of this place.” 16

A white Missourian, one Humphrey Smith, was indicted by
the Howard County grand jury in 1819 for inciting servile
insurrection, but the outcome of this case is not clear. 17 In
October, 1822, four white men were arrested and convicted of
having encouraged the Negroes involved in the Vesey plot.
These residents of Charleston represented four different nation-
alities, Andrew S. Rhodes, English; William Allen, Scotch;
Jacob Danders, German; and John Igneshias, Spanish. Only
Allen’s motives were suspect since he was accused by a free Negro
named Scott of expecting to reap a financial reward from the
successful rebels. The others, however, hated slavery, and their
crime consisted in letting the Negroes know this and in telling
them, as the German put it, “they had as much right to fight
for their liberty as the white people.” All were sentenced to
prison terms ranging from three to twelve months and to fines
from one hundred to one thousand dollars, which had to be
paid prior to release from jail. 18

In 1829 alone, there appeared three works produced by
Negroes which contained more or less open calls for, or justifi-
cations of, outright revolt.

The least open of these is the remarkable book of poems,
called The Hope of Liberty, written by George Moses Horton,
a slave of Chatham County, North Carolina, and published by
Joseph Gales, editor of a leading newspaper, the Raleigh
Register, 19 Occasional lines were fairly militant, as for example:

Oh, Liberty, thou golden prize
So often sought by blood —

We crave thy sacred sun to rise.

The gift of Nature's God /

Bid slavery hide her haggard face.

And barbarism fly:

I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.

4 6 TO BE FREE

A truculent note of foreboding and militance was struck by
the peculiar mystical pamphlet issued in February, 1829, by a
New York Negro, Robert Alexander Young. 20 This appears
especially in the prophecy of the coming of a Negro saviour
who, by his invincibility, will lead his people to freedom.

David Walker's work, written in clear, unmistakable prose
and containing no far-fetched allusions, appeared in the closing
months of that year. Not much is known of this very interesting
man, but these facts appear well-established: He was born, of
a free mother, in Wilmington, North Carolina, on September
28, 1785. 21 The enslavement of his fellow men disgusted and
enraged him. In 1828 he had written:

If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long, as true as God
reigns, I will be avenged. This is not the place for me, no, I must leave
this part of the country. It will be a great trial for me to live on the
same soil where so many men are in slavery, certainly I cannot remain
where I must hear their chains continually, and, where I must encounter
the results of their hypocritical enslavers. Go I must.

Walker went to Boston where he earned his bread by dealing
in old clothes. Here he became active in anti-slavery work,
making at least one speech before the Colored Association
of the city in December, 1828. He served as Boston agent for the
fighting New York anti-slavery newspaper edited and published
by Negroes, Freedom's Journal, and occasionally contributed
to it

In September, 1829, he published his Appeal, 22 and from then
until his mysterious death 23 sometime in 1830, supervised the
distribution and reprinting of this booklet, which during the
last year of his life went into its third edition.

It is certain that copies of this pamphlet were sent south with
the object of getting them into the hands of slaves. And it
reached them at a moment when they were displaying great
unrest. Note of this is made by Governor John Forsyth, of
Georgia, in a communication to the State legislature on Decem-
ber 21, 1829, in which he referred to a recent conspiracy in
Georgetown, South Carolina, and “the late fires in Augusta and
Savannah" set by the slaves. 24 These occurrences, said the
Governor, added to the importance of a letter he had just

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

47

received from W. T. Williams, the Mayor of Savannah, "inform-
ing me that sixty pamphlets of a highly seditious and insurrec-
tionary character had been seized by the police of the city." The
description that follows identifies this as the work of Walker,
and then appears the information that they had been "carried
to Savannah by the Steward of some vessel (a white man),
and delivered by him to a negro preacher for distribution."

In January, 1830, the Mayor of Richmond, Virginia, reported
the finding of a copy of the same pamphlet in the home of a
recently deceased free Negro, and in the same year and city
another free Negro, Thomas Lewis, was found to possess thirty
copies of the fearful pamphlet. 26

A printer in Milledgeville, Georgia, Elijah H. Burritt, brother
of Elihu, the famous "learned blacksmith," was accused in
February, 1830, of introducing this work within the state 20
and "was finally forced to flee for his life in the middle of the
night when a hostile mob attacked his dwelling." 27 Some copies
were also discovered early in 1830 in New Orleans. In May,
a Mr. James Smith of Boston (whether Negro or white is not
stated) was convicted of circulating the Appeal, fined one
thousand dollars and sentenced to a year's imprisonment in
that city. 28

The pamphlet's appearance in Walker's native state, where
slave disaffection was rife at the time, created much excitement.
First mention of it came from Wilmington in August, 1830,
when a free Negro brought a copy to the police. A slave,
unnamed, who had acted as distributor of the disconcerting
booklet, was arrested, but ref used— al though it is a good guess
that very persuasive tactics were used— to implicate others or
to tell how many he had distributed. 29 Spies were used in
Fayetteville in order to discover whether the pamphlet had
appeared there, but, said a report to the Governor of September
3, "altho this plan has been sometime in operation, it has yet
developed nothing that ought to excite our alarm." 30

The stirring contents of Walker's Appeal justified the fears
of the slavocracy. He used the Declaration of Independence
with telling effect, flinging its immortal words into the teeth of
those who upheld slavery. He denounced the colonizationists
and affirmed the Negro's right to the title of American. He

4 8 TO BE FREE

excoriated the traitors among his own people, finding it difficult
to find words damning enough with which to express his con-
tempt for them. He waxed sarcastic and exuded bitterness as
he contemplated the prevalent hypocrisy, with everyone talking
about liberty and equality:

But we (coloured people) and our children are brutes !! and of course
are, and ought to be Slaves to the American people and their children
forever!! to dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on en-
riching them, from one generation to another with our blood and our
tears!!! [Rebel, he said, rebel and] if you commence, make sure work —
do not trifle, for they do not trifle with you — they want us for their
slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us to that
wretched condition — therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill
or be killed. 81

At only one point did David Walker leave the immediate and
the practical, and this he did in order to utter the prophecy:

... for although the destruction of the oppressors God may not effect
by the oppressed, yet the Lord our God will bring other destruction
upon them — for not infrequently will he cause them to rise up one
against another, to be split and divided, and to oppress each other, and
sometimes to open hostilities with sword in hand.

The ensuing years witnessed a sharply accelerating growth in
militant abolitionism as the struggle between pro- and anti-
slavery forces became more acute. In 1831 William Lloyd Gar-
rison expressed his opinion on this subject and maintained it
throughout his long devotion to the cause. He wrote Le Roy
Sunderland on September 8 of that year that he did not advocate
servile rebellion, since he believed in non-resistance to evil,
but, “Of all men living, however, our slaves have the best
reason to assert their rights by violent measures, inasmuch as
they are more oppressed than others/’ 32

His newspaper, in line with its editor’s belief in freedom of
expression, did occasionally print material that bore no signs
of non-resistance, as, for example, a poem “supposed to be sung
by slaves in insurrection,” contributed by “V” and published
one month before the Turner uprising. Portions of this work
went as follows:

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

49

See, tyrants see; your empire shakes;

Your flaming roofs the wild wind fans;

Stung to the soul, the Negro wakes :

He slept, a brute — he wakes, a man!

His shackles fall.

Erect and tall

He glories in his new found might,

And wins with bloody hand his right.

Up, Afric, up; the land is free

It sees no slave to despot bow.

Our cry is Liberty —

On; strike for God and vengeance now
Fly, tyrants fly ,

Or stay and die.

No chains to bear, no scourge we fear;

We conquer, or we perish here , 33

Once a revolt started Garrison could not help wishing it
success and the bitterness of his language condemning the
hypocrisy of the slaveholders who habitually expressed sympathy
with rebels in Greece or France or Belgium or Poland, but
contempt for those on their very plantations, could not be
exceeded. Thus, following the Turner uprising. Garrison, in
his inimitable style, wrote:

Ye patriotic hypocrites! ye panegyrists of Frenchmen, Greeks, and
Poles! ye fustian declaimers for liberty! ye valiant sticklers for equal
rights among yourselves! ye haters of aristocracy! ye assailants of mon-
archy! ye republican nullifiers! ye treasonable disunionists! be dumb!
Cast no reproach upon the conduct of the slaves, but let your lips and
cheeks wear the blisters of condemnation! 34

A visitor to the city of Petersburg, Virginia, a Mr. Robinson,
was indiscreet enough to remark in the course of a private talk,
at the height of the terror evoked by Nat Turner in September,
1831, that, while he deprecated the rebellion yet he felt com-
pelled to acknowledge that “black men have, in the abstract,
a right to their freedom.” When his opinion became known, a
mob of over one hundred persons (“some of them . . . men of
fortune”) dragged him from his residence, lashed and stripped
him and, in this condition, drove him from the town. A Mr.

TO BE FREE

5°

Carter, who was the victim's host, was also compelled to leave.
“Not the least disgraceful feature in the case was, that the civil
authorities, though applied to, declined interfering." 85

At about this time James Forten, the well-to-do and courageous
Philadelphia Negro reformer, congratulated Garrison for having
withstood unflinchingly the campaign of intimidation let loose
against him, particularly after Turner's attempt. Forten asserted
that the cause of servile rebellion was in the South, not in
Garrison's Liberator, and that the latest revolt would strengthen
the anti-slavery movement by “bringing the evils of slavery more
prominently before the public . . . Indeed we live in stiring [sic]
times, and ever)' day brings news of some fresh effort for liberty,
either at home or abroad— onward, onward, is indeed the
watchword." 86

Others were moved to write, print, and send into the South
letters such as the following, dated Albany [N. Y. ?] September
15,1831:

Sir — As our Constitution says that all men are created equal; and as
God has made of one flesh all the nations of the earth; and as the
Negroes are no worse when bom than the Whites; and as there is no
good prospect that a voluntary release of the slaves will be effected to
any (great) degree, I hereby make known that for these and other
reasons, I will, as an individual, use all honorable means to sever the
iron band that unites the slave to their masters. And as long as this
national ulcer (slavery) remains upon a part of the republic, a disunion
is highly desirable. It is a disgrace to the United States. It is looked
upon as such by most of Europe. What? a republic, boasting its equal
rights, when a worse system of slavery is hardly (if at all) to be found.
It is a shame.

Yours Respectfully,

Sherlock P. Gregory 87

An even more militant letter was sent, anonymously, from
Boston, at about the same time, to the postmaster of Jerusalem,
the seat of the Virginia county, Southampton, which had wit-
nessed the Turner Rebellion. The length of this as yet unpub-
lished letter— it comes to about 6,000 words— precludes its full
quotation here.

The author states he is a Negro, and affirms the existence of
an extensive secret organization of his fellows whose object is

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

5 1

the forcible liberation of their enslaved brethren. He declares
that its agents were, and had been, touring the South and
planting seeds of rebellion, and that men in the North— Negro
and white— had contributed and would continue to contribute
money and supplies for this work. “We prefer," he writes, “to
see every person of colour headless and their heads on poles, if
you please, than to see them servants to a debauched and
effiminate [sic] race of whites. Oh, my blood boils, when I think
of the indignities we have suffered, and I long for the scene of
retribution." The letter closes with these words: “Till you hear
from us in characters of blood, I remain your humble, attentive,
watchful, and the Public's obedient servant, Nero." 88

In April, 1835, at a Boston anti-slavery meeting the question,
“Would the slaves be justified in resorting to physical violence
to obtain their freedom?" was submitted for discussion. The
position generally adopted was very much like that held by
Garrison. 89 The Reverend Samuel J. May and George Thomp-
son, the British Abolitionist, declared that if any human being
could justly employ violence it would be the slave in an
endeavor to gain freedom, but both agreed that pacifism was
right, in all cases, even for the slaves, and thus replied to the
question in the negative. A Mr. Parker, of the Newton Theo-
logical Institution, came around to an agreement with this
predominant feeling, although early in the discussion he had
felt differently. He had permitted himself to say: “If the masses
of the slaves would occasionally rise, like men and patriots,
and assert their rights, would not these attempts hasten the day
of total and complete emancipation?" He had, moreover,
declared that to the vast majority of the slaves the message of
true Christianity had not been brought, and the Bible remained
a closed book. “As heathens, then, would they not be justified
in revolting against their oppressors, especially as their object
would be to obtain an immense good— liberty and the Bible?"

Only one man, a Mr. Weeks, expressed and maintained dis-
agreement with the accepted philosophy, and even he opposed
violence. He did this, however, merely on the ground of expe-
diency, and argued that the Bible could be used as easily to
sanction the rising of the slaves as not. 40

Following the slave plots of the summer of 1835 and the

TO BE FREE

accusations leveled against the Abolitionists, there appeared, as
already noted, denials on their part of advocacy of rebellion.
It is, nevertheless, interesting to observe that the disavowals
were* not considered complete or satisfactory by some connected
with the movement. This appears, for example, in a letter fiom
William Oakes to Samuel Sewell.

I have looked with great anxiety to see under the signatures of the
most respectable & best known abolitionists in Boston, a statement of
their principles, and especially a full , & not to be misunderstood denial
in general & particular, of insurrectionary doctrines, or practices of any
kind. Let it be fully understood that y 4 of the Abolitionists do not be-
lieve in defensive war, much less in the “sacred right of insurrection.”* 1

There was much thinking, talking, and writing among Abo-
litionists in 1837 concerning this perplexing question of non-
resistance. It arose in the annual meeting of the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society held in Boston in January. A Negro,
identified merely as a Mr. Johnson who had once been a slave,
spoke at this meeting and informed the audience that he had
read Walker's pamphlet. He went on to express similar con-
victions, remarking that the white people in the United States
had fought for liberty and were revered as heroes for doing so.
Moreover, said Mr. Johnson, in his sparkling style, even a bug
will try to bite when stepped upon.

William Lloyd Garrison followed, and conceded that when
Mr. Johnson pointed to the inconsistency of white Americans
in denouncing slave rebellion and glorying in their own Revo-
lution, his argument was unanswerable. Garrison also noted
the fact that several of the state constitutions, as those of Mary-
land and Tennessee, contained the words, “The doctrine of
non-resistance to oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of
the good and happiness of mankind.” Yet, he said, this was not
his opinion and he could but reiterate his belief in the evil of
violence and the duty of non-resistance.

This appeared to be the dominant sentiment of the meeting.
Indeed, a Negro Abolitionist of Boston, the Reverend Hosea
Easton, offered the following resolution, meant in a compli-
mentary sense, and it was adopted— though its statement of fact
is open to grave doubt: “Resolved, That the spirit of insurrec-

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

53

tion and insubordination of the slave population of this country,
is restrained more by the influence of the free colored people
thereof, than by all the oppressive legislative enactments of
the slave-holding states.” 42

The determined resistance to mob attack offered by the anti-
slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, and his friends (Lovejoy himself
being killed at Alton, Illinois, November 7, 1837), and the fact
that the Abolitionist societies did not deprecate the resistance
then offered aroused considerable comment. The famous radical
ladies from South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimk£, wrote
a joint letter to Theodore Weld referring to the use of violence in
this episode and to the absence of an expression of regret over
this on the part of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 43 “Surely
to be consistent,” said these earnest young women, “abolitionists
sh'd go South and help the slaves to obtain their freedom at
the point of the bayonet.”

Charles Marriott, a Hicksite Quaker whose anti-slavery agita-
tion was to lead to his disownment, wrote an illuminating letter,
headed “private,” to Garrison in December. Marriott declared:

I & some other of my friends called soon after [the Lovejoy tragedy]
at the A.S. office to urge the necessity of disavowing this resort to arms —
all the satisfaction we could obtain was that Abolitionists were divided
on the subject of defensive war, and that they could not say what they
did not believe in. A division on this point, seems almost inevitable.
Fighting & pacific Abolitionists! Your Mass. Society has done nobly, as
also has Benja. Lundy, Wm. Goodell, H. C. Wright, and some other
individuals, but from the spirit manifested by not a few abolitionists.
Slavery is not likely to be terminated by a moral conflict onlyM

A communication from Putnam, Ohio, of a little later date
revealed growing uncertainty as to the wisdom of pacifism
and appealed to Garrison for philosophic ammunition to hurl
at the doubters. 45 The subject of force was discussed at the
town's lyceum, and it was discovered that while about half
the inhabitants of the community opposed slavery, only some
three or four individuals were non-resistants.

The same question was discussed in 1837 in a Negro news-
paper, the Colored American, published in New York City, in
a series of articles by William Whipper. Mr. Whipper's essay
took a pacifist stand, yet it is interesting to observe that the

TO BE FREE

54

editor, Samuel E. Cornish, in introducing the series, wrote:
“But we honestly confess that we have yet to learn what virtue
there would be in using moral weapons, in defense against
kidnappers or a midnight incendiary with a torch in his hand." 48

An early militant Abolitionist who actually discussed details
of a plan for putting his ideas into practice was Jabez D.
Hammond of Cherry Valley, New York. In the spring of 1839
he told Gerrit Smith (who did not then agree) of this belief in
the justice of the use of force in this case, and suggested the
establishment of military schools for young Negroes in Canada
and Mexico. “I believe that young men thus educated . . . would
be the most successful Southern missionaries." 47

By 1841, however, Gerrit Smith had moved to the point of
urging slaves to flee and to take whatever they needed and to
blast away all obstacles in order to succeed in their effort at self-
liberation. The organization which heard his words, the Ameri-
can Anti-Slavery Society, while not committing itself to an
approval of them, did feel impelled to go on record as declaring
that its members would not aid in suppressing Negro insur-
rection. 48

David Ruggles, a leading New York Negro Abolitionist,
headed an open letter announcing an anti-slavery convention
with the motto, "Know ye not who would be free. Themselves
must strike the first blow!" In the text of the letter itself were
these words: "Our condition is everywhere identical. Rise,
brethren, rise! Strike for freedom, or die slaves!" 49

An exceedingly severe note of bitterness enters the writings
of the great Theodore Weld at about this time. Thus, in a
letter to his wife in the midst of a severe economic depression
in the South, and threats of war against Great Britain (which,
should they materialize might culminate, he thought, in freedom
of the Negroes), Weld wrote:

The slaveholders of the present generation, if cloven down by God’s
judgments, cannot plead that they were unwarned. Warnings, reproofs,
and the foreshadows of coming retribution have for years frightened
the very air, and should sudden destruction come upon them at last,
well may the God of the oppressed cry out against them, “because I
have called and ye have refused. . . . Therefore will I laugh at your
calamity and mock when your fear cometh.” 50

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM 55

The rebellion in October, 1841, of the slaves aboard the
domestic slavetrader. Creole, while en route from Hampton
Roads, Virginia, to New Orleans, the sterling character dis-
played by the Negroes, their success in getting the ship to
Bermuda, and the resulting international complications brought
the question of pacifism among Abolitionists once more to the
fore.

One of the country's most eminent fighters against slavery,
the Ohio Congressman, Joshua R. Giddings, made his position
clear in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives
in 1842 opposing the treatment of the rebellious slaves as
common criminals. The resolution maintained that slavery
existed only by positive, local law, not by a Federal statute. Once
the ship, therefore, had reached the high seas and left the
jurisdiction of any slave state, the Negroes were no longer slaves,
and they had but reasserted a natural right in rebelling against
those who pretended to own them. In attempting to secure
their freedom, said Congressman Giddings, the Negroes did
what was commendable and proper. For daring to introduce
such a resolution Mr. Giddings was censured by his colleagues,
by a vote of 126 to 69, and immediately resigned. But, and this
marked an important milestone in the Abolitionist movement,
the determined gentleman was promptly re-elected by his con-
stituents. 51

The year 1843 is marked by the flaming speech made by one
of the best known Negroes of that day, the Reverend Henry
Highland Garnet, before a Negro convention held in Buffalo,
New York. Garnet had been born a slave in Kent County,
Maryland, in 1815, and had, with his parents, escaped to New
Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1824. That same year, however, his
sister was retaken by slave-catchers. The Garnets moved to New
York City in 1825. And here Garnet studied at elementary and
high schools, and met and was greatly influenced by the Negro
radical, the Reverend Theodore S. Wright. Together with
Alexander Crummell, he then attended a school at Canaan,
New Hampshire. Both, however, were driven out by a mob, at
which time Garnet seems to have lost any faith he may have had
in the efficacy of non-resistance, for he used a shotgun in his
own defense.

g6 TO BE FREE

From there Garnet went to Oneida Institute at Whitesboro,
New York, and studied under Beriah Green. Completing his
work, he taught in Troy from 1840 to 1842, and later became
pastor of the Negro Presbyterian Church in that city. He was
holding that position when he delivered “An address to the
slaves of the United States of America” before a convention of
colored citizens in Buffalo.

Henry Highland Garnet’s speech advanced ideas beyond
which the Abolitionist movement was never to go. He said to
his brethren, “If you must bleed, let it all come at once.” He
reminded them of their martyrs, men like Denmark Vesey and
Nat Turner, and affirmed, "It is your solemn and imperative
duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical,
that promises success.” He was specific:

Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties! Now is the
day and the hour! Let every slave throughout the land do this, and
the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than
you have been; you cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already.
Rather die freemen than live to be slaves.

Should these sentiments be broadcast throughout the land as
coinciding with those of the convention itself? This question
was debated, with the comparative newcomer to the ranks of
the Negro Abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, taking, at this stage
of his career, the negative, and carrying the convention with
him. But this was done by a vote of 19 to 18, the closeness of
which is indicative of the fact that militancy developed earlier
and was more widespread among the Negro Abolitionists— so
many of whom had themselves felt the lash— than among their
white fellow-workers. 52

Desperation rather than philosophic conviction sometimes
led to the expression of militant views. The difficulties of the
struggle and the weakness and splits that plagued the Abolition-
ists led some among them to doubt that verbal or even political
action would bring essential improvement. This mood was
expressed by William Birney in a letter to his father, James,
dated Cincinnati, June 14, 1843: “When I witness these ill-
considered movements on the part of the friends of the Slave,

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM 57

1 do feel that our hope is not in man or in political action but
in the flames of insurrection, or of foreign war.” 83

It has been asserted that in 1844 a Negro, the Reverend Moses
Dickson, of Cincinnati, together with eleven other Negroes,
founded an “international Order of Twelve of the Knights and
Daughters of Tabor” for the purpose of accomplishing the over-
throw of slavery in any and every way possible. In 1846 the
same individual is supposed to have started another secret
organization, called the Knights of Liberty, which used St.
Louis as its headquarters and aided hundreds of slaves to flee,
but whether it was active in aiding or provoking conspiracies
and rebellions is not clear. 54

A comment made early in 1844 by the Presidential candidate
of the political Abolitionists, in defending his position, is
indicative of a developing school of thought. James G. Birney
asked, rhetorically, whether it was not a fact that all just men
rejoice “when they hear that the oppressed of any land have
achieved their liberty, at whatever cost to their tyrants?” 85
And while this former slaveholder did not actually express the
deduction that logically followed from his words, the conclusion
could hardly have been made more plain even if specifically
drawn.

From the wing of the non-political Abolitionists during the
same year came the blast against the Constitution delivered by
the Bostonian, Francis Jackson, on the Fourth of July. Mr.
Jackson publicly renounced his allegiance to this expression of
the fundamental law, and he did so particularly because of its
fourth article guaranteeing Federal aid for the suppression of
domestic violence

which [as he saw it], pledges to the South the military force of the
country, to protect the masters against their insurgent slaves, and binds
us, and our children, to shoot down our fellow-countrymen, who may
rise, in emulation of our revolutionary fathers, to vindicate their in-
alienable “rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — this
clause of the Constitution, I say distinctly, I never will support. 53

Mr. Jackson s position was adopted at a convention of the
New England Workingmen’s Association held in January, 1846,
at Lynn, Massachusetts. These laborers resolved, “That while

TO BE FREE

58

we are willing to pledge ourselves to use all means in our power,
consistent with our principles, to put down wars, insurrections
and mobs, and to protect all men from the evils of the same,
we will not take up arms to sustain the Southern slave-holders
in robbing one-fifth of our countrymen of their labor/’ They
urged, moreover, that “our brethren speak out in thunder tones,
both as association and individuals, and let it no longer be
said that Northern laborers, while they are contending for
their rights, are a standing army to keep three million of their
brethren and sisters in bondage at the point of the bayonet/' 5 *
An individual who was soon to put his philosophic convic-
tions into practice and thereby attract the attention of the
world and help precipitate the Second American Revolution,
John Brown, had by this period arrived at those convictions.
In the year 1847 Frederick Douglass visited Brown in his humble
Springfield, Massachusetts, home. The two men spoke of means
wherewith to eradicate slavery. Brown, with perfect confidence
in the discreetness and integrity of Douglass, did not hesitate
to tell him that, in his opinion, nothing but force could over-
throw the institution of human bondage. And he told him,
too, of his plan for the most effectual use of force, the employ-
ment of small units of men, Negro and white, to penetrate the
slave area, establish themselves in the Appalachian Mountains
and there serve as bases from which marauding expeditions
against nearby slave plantations might set out, and to which
slaves might flee. 58

Douglass thought the plan had “much to commend it,” but
was not yet convinced that moral suasion might not convert the
nation as a whole, even the slaveholders, to the anti-slavery
viewpoint 59 Nevertheless, Brown's arguments, that slavery was
a state of war, and that the owners of human property would
never voluntarily relinquish it, impressed Douglass so that, as
he said, “My utterances became more and more tinged by the
color of this man's strong impressions/'

The House of Representatives heard strange words in 1848-
words such as even he who now uttered them, Joshua R. Gid-
dings, had not hitherto used. That Ohio Congressman praised
Captain Drayton of the Pearl who, for attempting to carry to
freedom a group of Washington slaves, had been caught and

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

59

jailed. Mr. Giddings thought it right for an American Repre-
sentative to visit such a man in his cell and to congratulate
him personally on his courage. This raised a whirlwind of
protest. Mr. Haskell of Tennessee asked his interesting colleague
whether he actually felt it to be proper for a slave to flee from
his master. Mr. Giddings said “yes," and more than yes, for he
declared “that it was not only the right of the oppressed to
obtain their liberty if they could do so, even by slaying their
oppressors, but it was their unquestionable duty, even to the
taking of the life of every man who opposed them." 60

As the weeks and months wore on these thoughts were becom-
ing less and less strange and more and more frequently expressed.
Frederick Douglass, by 1849, was moving towards Garnet's
position which he had, six years before, opposed. In Faneuil
Hall, Boston, this striking individual, who bore the marks of
enslavement upon his back, and whose four sisters and one
brother were still in chains, denounced the oppression of his
people, cited the revolutionary heritage of America, and declared:

In view of these things I should welcome the intelligence tomorrow,
should it come, that the slaves had risen in the South, and the sable
arms which had been engaged in beautifying and adorning the South
were engaged in spreading death and destruction there . 61

Meanwhile, the same year the Liberty Party resolved that it
was preferable to send the slaves compasses and pistols rather
than Bibles. 62

During the next decade such militant ideas were so frequently
expressed that one is justified in declaring that, among anti-
slavery folk, they became commonplace. It is a moot question
whether the hitherto dominant pacifist or non-resistance wing
in the movement (so far, at least, as its articulate members
were concerned) was not overshadowed and outweighed, in the
decade of crisis, by activists and believers in resistance.

A convention of Negro adherents of the Free Soil Party
which met in Boston in 1852 heard the Reverend J. B. Smith of
Rhode Island, whose own father had been killed while attempt-
ing to flee, declare:

He believed that resistance to tyrants was obedience to God, and
hence, to his mind, the only drawback to the matchless Uncle Tom of

TO BE FREE

6o

Mrs. Stowe was his virtue of submission to tyranny — an exhibition of
grace which he (the speaker) did not covet. 118

In the same year, another Negro, Martin R. Delany, ended
a letter to Garrison with these lines:

Were I a slave, 1 would be free,

I would not live to live a slave;

But boldly strike for LIBERTY —

For FREEDOM or a Martyr’s grave .«*

The New York Abolitionist and correspondent of Gcrrit
Smith, Jabez D. Hammond, whose militancy was observed as
early as 1839, retained the same views and let Mr. Smith hear
them again in 1852. He affirmed the righteousness of the forcible
overthrow of slavery and maintained, with great optimism, that,
“An organized army of 10,000 men with an able commander,
and arms munitions of war and provisions for 50,000 men would
inarch through the Southern States and liberate every slave
there in six months.” 65

At about tills time the Reverend George W. Perkins wrote
an article entitled, “Can Slaves Rightfully Resist and Fight?”
in which he warned that quick emancipation alone would spare
future bloodshed. And, while himself inclining towards the non-
resistant school, he confessed, as did Garrison, that.

If it was right in 1776 to resist, fight, and kill to secure liberty, it is right
to do the same in 1852. If three millions of whites might rightfully re-
sist the powers ordained by God, then three millions of blacks may
rightfully do the same. 66

The Reverend J. W. Loguen, the Syracuse Negro who gained
fame for his public defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
and his prominence in the Jerry Rescue in 1851, wrote Garrison
a letter early in 1854 concerning his own attitude, which seemed
to be most prevalent among Negroes, generally:

I want you to set me down as a Liberator man. Whether you will call
me so or not, I am with you in heart. I may not be in hands and head
for my hands will fight a slaveholder — which I suppose THE LIBERA-
TOR and some of its good friends would not do. ... I am a fugitive
slave, and you know that we have strange notions about many things 67

Charles Francis Adams, also, at this time, made an interesting

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

6l

generalization when he asserted that while personally he opposed
rebellion on the part of the slaves, yet he believed that, ‘‘Prob-
ably few of them [Abolitionists] entertain any doubt of the
abstract right of the slave to free himself from the condition in
which he is kept against his own consent, in any manner
practicable." 68

Among a series of conventions of free Negroes called for the
purpose of battling Jim-Crowism and aiding the Abolitionist
movement was one held in Philadelphia in the spring of 1854.
This convention adopted a most radical resolution declaring that
‘‘those who, without crime, are outlawed by any Government
can owe no allegiance to its enactments;— that we advise all
oppressed to adopt the motto, ‘Liberty or Death/ ” 69

A widely read work issued simultaneously in 1855 by four
publishers— in London, Boston, New York, and Cleveland-
opened with sentences modeled after those of the manifesto of
1776, but specifically applied to the American Negro:

When in any State, the oppression of the laboring portion of the
community amounts to an entire deprivation of their civil and personal
rights; when it assumes to control their wills, and to punish with bodily
tortures the least infraction of its mandates, it is obvious that the class
so overwhelmed with injustice, are necessarily, unless prevented by ig-
norance from knowing their rights and their wrongs, the enemies of
the government. To them, insurrection and rebellion are primary,
original duties. 70

The Kansas war stimulated the spread and acceptance of these
ideas, so that while in 1849 only a rather restricted group like
the Liberty Party would resolve that pistols were more important
to the southern slaves than Bibles, by the years of the Kansas
excitement a minister who earnestly strove to say what he felt
people wanted to hear, Henry Ward Beecher, was sending
pistols into the troubled territory and calling them his Bibles.
Gerrit Smith, too, exemplifies the trend. ‘‘Hitherto," he declared,
‘‘I have opposed the bloody abolition of slavery. But now, when
it begins to march its conquering bands into the Free States, I
and ten thousand other peace men are not only ready to have
it repulsed with violence, but pursued even unto death, with
violence." 71

TO BE FREE

6 *

The influential Frederick Douglass also committed himself
to the same side at this time. While affirming that it was still
one’s duty to use "persuasion and argument” and any other
instrumentality that offered promise of ending slavery without
violence,

we yet feel that its peaceful annihilation is almost hopeless ... and
contend that the slave’s right to revolt is perfect, and only wants the
occurrence of favorable circumstances to become a duty. ... We can-
not but shudder as we call to mind the horrors that have marked servile
insurrections-we would avert them if we could; but shall the millions
for ever submit to robbery, to murder, to ignorance, and every unnamed
evil which an irresponsible tyrant can devise, because the overthrow
of that tyrant would be productive of horrors? We say not. The recoil,
when it comes, will be in exact proportion to the wrongs inflicted;
terrible as it will be, we accept and hope for it. 72

John Henry Hill, a slave who had escaped from Richmond
in 1853, expressed the opinion of one who had himself worn
the chains. "Our Pappers,” he wrote, "contain long details of
insurrectionary movements among the slaves at the South . . . I
beleve that Prayers affects great good, but I beleve that the fire
and sword would affect more good in this case. ‘ 3

At a time when old John Brown had fully matured his plans
for an invasion of the slave area, another Abolitionist, Lysander
Spooner of Boston, developed, quite independently, put into
writing, and finally into print, a proposal strikingly similar to
the ideas of Brown. Spooner printed a long circular, one side of
which contained an appeal “To the Non-Slaveholders of the
South" calling upon them to overthrow the domination of the
Bourbons and thus assure their own well-being and advance-
ment, as well as the liberation of the slaves. The other side
contained “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery” which envisaged
the sending of money and arms to the slaves, the inciting of
rebellion, the use of arson, flogging, and kidnapping to destroy
the property and morale of the slaveholders, the formation
throughout the nation of Leagues of Freedom, the members of
which, finally, were to descend upon the slave-holding area,
declare freedom for all, and, if necessary, wage a war of libera-
tion. Moreover, said Spooner, should such a war be necessary,
the property of the slave-owners was to be confiscated and

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM 63

unrequited toil, and in order to make certain that their rights
given to the slaves as some compensation for their years of
as free men would be retained after the war. 74

Some copies of this amazing document were distributed, 75 but
John Brown learned of it, and upon his informing Spooner that
continued publicity and distribution would injure the possibili-
ties of the successful carrying out of his own plan (of which
Spooner heard for the first time) its distribution was stopped. 76

Spooner sent copies of his circular (in manuscript form) to
several anti-slavery leaders and received and preserved the
answers from nine of them. Only one, J. R. French, writing
from Painesville, Ohio, utterly and completely repudiated the
idea. He felt it to be “ Quixotic in the extreme” and found it
hard to believe that a “sober man of reason,” as he knew lawyer
Spooner to be, would have “any faith in such a scheme," fit for
“the erased [sic] brain of S. S. Foster .” 77

Three others, Lewis Tappan, Hinton Rowan Helper, and
Francis Jackson, felt that they could not go along with Mr.
Spooner. Lewis Tappan acknowledged that the Negroes had
every right to their freedom, and would be as justified in
obtaining it by violence as any people, including those who
engineered the American Revolution, but, as for himself, he
was “a Christian, and a peace-maker, and abjure all resort to
deadly weapons to secure our rights.” 78

Francis Jackson, a seventy-year-old veteran of the crusade,
told Spooner he could not “accept your ‘Plan,’ or join your
'League.' ’’ He had, he wrote, been laboring with the Garri-
sonians for twenty-five years and was "loaded down to the
gunwales with their apparatus” and believed their “doctrine of
Non-Resistance is true.” Yet, he declared, “I shall neither
encourage, [n]or discourage you, because I know your motives
are true to your own light, and conviction of duty," and ended,
"I have but little strength left, but if I had ever so much, I
could not ask, or encourage others to go, where I was not
ready and willing to go myself.’’ 79

Hinton Rowan Helper preceded the salutation of his letter
with the words, “Immature— Impractical— Impolitic?’ which, he
went on, succinctly expressed his “candid criticism of the
circular in regard to which you did me the honor to request

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64

my opinion.” He urged that it be not distributed, "or, to say
the least, that you will withhold it from the public until after
the next Presidential campaign." 80 His closing paragraphs are
interesting enough to warrant full quotation:

For several months past I have had it in contemplation to issue a
circular especially designed to reach the South in die right way; and if
I am not failed or prejudiced in my aims and efforts, I think I shall,
in connection with other Southerners, who are willing and anxious to
cooperate with me, be successful in accomplishing more in that direc-
tion within the next two or three years than has been accomplished
within the last fifty.

My friend, Prof. Hedrick, has seen your circular, and fully concurs
in the opinion which I have expressed in reference to the same. Neither
the Professor nor myself, however, desire to be taken as criterions to go
by. Probably it would be well for you to consult others. 81

Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, Stephen S. Foster, and Dr. Daniel Mann expressed
agreement in principle, and the last two very largely in detail,
with Spooner.

The earliest reply in the whoie series came from Wendell
Phillips, whose letter was dated July 16, 1858. His idea is
summarized in the sentence, "Your scheme would be a good
one if it were only practicable He doubted, however, that
enough men would enlist "to save the attempt from being
ridiculous,” and added that if the opposite were true and a
fairly "considerable number did rally round you it would be
treason & the Govt, would at once move & array all its power
to crush the enterprise-before it made head enough to be able
to compete with an organized despotism like ours. In such
circumstances I cannot see any present availability & use in
the proposal."

Yet Phillips did not completely shut the door for he ended
by remarking that he always heard Spooner’s elaboration of his

own plans with interest & respect & sometime we will steal an
hour & talk it over.”

Theodore Parker's letter, written some months later, said much
the same thing.

JZJT 1 ^ VCry "I*" ' h0USht & ex P ressed as ind <* d "e all your
mgs. If lt were widely circulated at the South, it would strike a

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM 65

panic terror into those men, whose 2,000,000,000 is invested neither in
land nor things. But I think you can't get a Corporal’s Guard to carry
your plan into execution. When I am well enough I will come & talk
with you about it. 82

On the same day Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had
demonstrated his resistance philosophy in fugitive slave rescues,
wrote Spooner from Worcester a very long and highly informa-
tive letter of approval. The circular had his "general approba-
tion." He felt that "the increase of interest in the subject of
Slave Insurrection is one of the most important signs of the
time," and was convinced "that, within a few years, the phase of
the subject will urge itself on general attention, and the root
of the matter be thus reached. I think that this will be done by
the action of the slaves themselves, in certain localities, with
the aid of secret co-operation from the whites." This, he believed,
was "greatly to be desired" as it would terrorize the slaveholders,
force them to the defensive in the national struggle and stimulate
thinking in the North "on the fundamental question of Liberty."

He reaffirmed, then, his sympathy with Spooner’s aim. "My
only criticism on your plan is, that I think in Revolutions the
practical end always comes first 8c and the theory afterwards; just
as our fathers, long after the Battle of Bunker Hill, still dis-
avowed the thought of separation— and honestly." There followed
a sentence whose truth John Brown’s exploit was soon to confirm:

For one man who would consent to the proposition of a slave insur-
rection, there are ten who would applaud it, when it actually came to
the point. People’s hearts go faster than their heads. ... In place there-
fore of forming a Society or otherwise propounding insurrections as a
plan, my wish would be to assure it as a fact.

Higginson hinted at the coming Brown attempt, in which he
was already deeply involved, by remarking, "Were I free to
do it, I could give you assurance that what I say means some-
thing, 8c that other influences than these of which you speak are
even now working to the same end. I am not now at liberty to
be more explicit." He closed by affirming that Spooner’s work
had considerable value in preparing the public mind for servile
rebellion, something that he always did in his speeches and
had urged other agitators to do.

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66

Another Worcester man, Stephen S. Foster, whose contempt
for compromise and expediency had led even sympathetic folk
to think him, at best, eccentric, though opening his letter with
remarks concerning a severe rheumatic attack, proceeded to
give his opinion in an essay of some one thousand words. 88 He
had long seen, he declared, the need for new methods among
the friends of freedom.

The grand defect in our policy is that it sets our practice in direct
conflict with our principles & teachings. We proclaim the great truth
of the equality of the races, & maintain with words the equal right of
the slaves with ourselves to liberty & personal protection: but in prac-
tice, with few exceptions we essentially ignore these theories, Sc either
unite politically with their masters in active measures for the destruc-
tion of their loyalty, or fold our arms, 8c refuse them the protection we
demand for ourselves.

In typical unyielding fashion Foster said that if we claim
the products of our own labor, we must assert the slaves’ right
to the property of their owners, and help them to get possession
of it. And if we believe in taking life,

under any circumstances, we must teach him to cleave down his tyrant
master, 8c aid him in the work. If we refuse allegiance to a government
which tramples upon our own liberty, we must put our heel upon the
government which yokes him with the brute. That abolitionism which
comes short of this is essentially defective; 8c if persisted in when prop-
erly enlightened, is shown to be tainted 8c spurious.

While, according to Foster, the ultimate solution resided in
the formation of a national party gaining mass support and
power in order to put these principles into action, yet concerning
Spooner's proposal he wrote:

Entertaining these views I cannot but regard your plan of action, in
the main, as a step in the right direction. ... To aim at such a result
is to quicken the nation’s sense of justice; 8c thus to pave the way to
the final overthrow of the whole system. . . . Every supporter of the
government must be held responsible for the entire slave system, 8c made
identical in moral turpitude with the master, 8c both must be outlawed.

A physician friend of Spooner's, Daniel Mann, who had
recently moved to Painesville, Ohio, wrote the most enthusi-
astic letter of all those preserved. 84 He thanked Lysander Spooner

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

67

for himself and "in behalf of the cause, for which you have
done a great work, in making a great beginning ” He referred
to America's revolutionary history, and the audacity of the
slaveholders. Then came these observations:

Truth should not disarm her champions, yet such seems to be the
effect of her humanizing 8c elevating influences. We learn to hate fight-
ing 8c therefore are not “valiant for the truth.” War has been employed
so long only in behalf of wrong, that the idea of its use in behalf of
right has become obsolete. Yet war is wicked only when its purpose is
not worthy. A war, in whatever form, 8c to whatever extent, however
desperate 8c bloody against slavery would be a holy war. . . . My trust in
God is stronger when I put some trust in myself 8c keep my powder
dry. Garrisonism (which is only a new name for what Christianity once
meant) would, 8c yet will plant the wilderness of this world with the
rose of Sharon, but there needs a rough breaking up team to prepare
the way. The ugly dragons heads must be cut off 8c their necks seared 8c
their dens destroyed. No people are worthy of freedom who will not
fight in its behalf. There may be higher truths than this, but this is as
high as I can climb at present.

In 1859 a commercial publisher, A. B. Burdick of New York,
who had become famous two years earlier as the publisher
of Helper's Impending Crisis, issued a book openly advocating
the inciting of servile rebellion. This was the work of a former
New York Tribune editorial writer, James Redpath, and it was
dedicated to John Brown, prior to the raid on Harper's Ferry. 85
The author had taken seriously the resolution of the Liberty
Party in 1849 that pistols and compasses, not Bibles, were what
the slaves most needed, and for several months in 1854 and 1855
he had traveled through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia
in order to put that resolution into effect. 86

In his introductory pages Redpath boldly announces:

I do not hesitate to urge the friends of the slave to incite insurrections
and encourage, in the North, a spirit which shall ultimate in civil and
servile wars. . . . What France was to us in our hour of trial, let the
North be to the slave today. ... If the fathers were justified in their
rebellion, how much more will the slaves be justifiable in their insurrec-
tion? You, Old Hero! [John Brown] believe that the slave should be
aided and urged to insurrection; and hence do I lay this tribute at your
feet. ... I am a Peace-Man — and something more. I would fight and
kill for the sake of peace. Now, slavery is a state of perpetual war. I am

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68

a Non-Resistant — and something more. I would slay every man who
attempted to resist the liberation of the slave. I am a Democrat — and
nothing more. I believe in humanity and human rights. I recognize
nothing as so sacred on earth.

Similar appeals are scattered through the work and it ends on
the same note. “There are men who are tired of praising French
patriots-who are ready to be Lafayettes and Kosciuskos to the
slaves.” 87 Guerrilla warfare, using the mountains and swamps
as bases, is the method, and the young men who gained expe-
rience in the Kansas fighting should be the leaders. “Will you
aid them— will you sustain them ? Are you in favor of a senile
insurrection? Tell God in acts.”

A consistent pacifist, Adin Ballou, was troubled by this swing
towards militance just before John Brown crashed onto the
scene. But that event, as he confessed, 88 and as Higginson had
prophesied to Spooner, by turning the abstract into the concrete,
dealt, for that period, a death blow to non-resistance.

Directly implicated in Brown's plans were many prominent
individuals— Frank Sanborn, Theodore Parker, Thomas Went-
worth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Harriet
Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, and others. 89 Perhaps the
aspect of the affair most indicative of the turn in sentiments is
the fact that two men who were with Brown at Harper's Ferry,
the brothers Edwin and Barclay Coppoc, were of Quaker fam-
ilies, and while one of them, Edwin (hanged for his part in the
raid) had earlier been disowned by the Friends for non-attend-
ance at meetings, the other, Barclay, was still a member in
good standing of the Society. This unique Quaker escaped from
Virginia and returned to Iowa where he was disowned January
11, 1860, for bearing arms. 90

Henry David Thoreau was moved to utter a “Plea for John
Brown” in which he hailed the man as the possessor of a high
aim and the performer of a noble act, 91 while Wendell Phillips,
speaking in Brooklyn, New York, on November 1, 1859, publicly
affirmed his belief that the slaves had both the right and the
duty of rebelling. 92

Striking, indeed, was the shift in attitude on the part of the
Reverend Henry C. Wright. In the 'forties this man had written
the “Non-Resistance” column in The Liberator . By 1851, how-

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

69

ever, he felt it to be the duty of Abolitionists to go into the
South and aid the slaves to flee. 93 In 1859, as he wrote the
imprisoned John Brown from Natick, Massachusetts, on Novem-
ber 21, he presided at

a very large and enthusiastic meeting of the citizens of this town, with-
out regard to political and religious creeds, [which] was held last eve-
ning, for the purpose of considering and acting upon the following
resolution:

Whereas, Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, therefore, Re-
solved, that it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters,
and the right and duty of the North to incite them to resistance, and
to aid them . 94

This resolution, said Mr. Wright, was adopted “without a
dissenting voice,” and was mailed to the Governor of Virginia.

Lamentations by more moderate anti-slavery men also indicate
the trend. This appears, for example, in a letter from David
D. Bernard to Hamilton Fish complaining of the growth of
militance, in the Abolitionist movement, and the spreading of
the idea that for both whites and Negroes it was a duty to destroy
all slaveholders. 95

In May, 1860, James Redpath wrote to a convention of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that he would not attend
as he “had no faith in conventions, but only in the sword and
insurrection,” and that he was “pledged to the work of inciting
an armed insurrection among the slaves of the South, and there-
fore could have nothing to do with peaceful agitation.” 96

He did, however, organize his own meeting, but this was
to be held on the anniversary of Brown's martyrdom and its
dominant note was to be a rededication to the aims and purposes
of the Old Man. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the founders
back in 1838 of the Non-Resistance Society, was asked to speak,
but declined on the grounds of indisposition. He did, however,
send Redpath a long letter in lieu of his personal appearance,
and while reiterating his own belief in the inviolability of human
life which disarmed “alike the oppressor and the oppressed,”
made strong and repeated appeals to those who were not, in
principle, pacifists, to aid in servile rebellions. A few examples,
among many, of such passionate sentences are:

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70

Brand the man as a hypocrite and dastard, who, in one breath, exults
in the deeds of Washington and Warren, and in the next, denounces
Nat Turner as a monster for refusing longer to wear the yoke and be
driven under the lash and for taking up arms to defend his God-given

rights Let Hancock and Adams be covered with infamy, or the black

liberators who aided John Brown be honored in history . . . were I a
convert to the doctrine of 76, that a resort to the sword is justifiable
to recover lost liberty, then would I plot insurrection by day and by
night, deal more blows and less in words, and seek through blood the
emancipation of all who are groaning in captivity at the South. 97

As this philosophy of resistance gathered disciples, as the
danger of civil war increased, and as reports of slave uprisings
and plots became more and more frequent, serious consideration
was given in the North to the question of its obligation to aid,
if called upon, in the suppression of Negro insurrections. In
September, 1860, Senator James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin,
asserted that if the slaves rose in rebellion the Constitution “binds
us to put them down with ball and bayonet. The truth is, and
we may as well open our eyes to the fact, that the strong arm
of the federal government may be invoked to hold them for their
masters to work them/* 98

He who believed this and possessed firm anti-slavery convic-
tions was forced into the position— as were the Garrisonians—
of denouncing the Constitution and advocating disunion. There
were some, however, like William Jay and Lysander Spooner, 99
who professed to see no pro-slavery bias in the Constitution, and
denied that it contained the obligation to suppress slave insur-
rections. In addition, others like John Quincy Adams, contended
that the method by which the federal government ended rebel-
lion— or, specifically, a servile rebellion— was nowhere specified. 100
And, if this might best be done by granting the demands of the
insurgents— in the case of slaves, by granting them their freedom—
the federal government, in the exercise of its war powers, might
do that.

This, in essence, was the reply of Joshua R. Giddings to
Senator Doolittle:

If necessary to protea the people the army may be used to shoot down
the slaves; but if the insurgent slaves can be pacified by having their
freedom, the Executive may protect the people by giving the slaves

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

7 1

their liberty, or by sending them out of the State or country, as was
practiced in the Florida war by Generals Scott, Jessup and Taylor. 101

Mr. Giddings called this a “remedy” for slave revolts but it
certainly was not one calculated to increase the slaveholders'
devotion to the Union, nor to allay the disaffection of their
victims— assuming it reached their ears.

The years of the ultimate triumph of the philosophy of
resistance saw its frequent application to the slave population.
In the early days of the Civil War suggestions for the provoking
of Negro insurrection appeared. Thus The Liberator of April
26, 1861, printed a letter by “Insurrectionist” advocating servile
rebellion as the quickest and surest way of conquering the
slavocracy, although Garrison did not fail to record his dissent
from the views of this writer. Yet a much stiffer tone of protest
came from that pioneer when he learned of General Benjamin
F. Butler's offer to Governor Andrew of Maryland to aid in
suppressing a threatened uprising. 102

In May, 1861, certain unnamed free Negroes of Pennsylvania
offered to go down into the South for the purpose of provoking
slave rebellions, but Governor Curtin refused to sanction this. 103
“A Voice from the Under Current” rising from Texas at the
same time told of considerable discontent and mass flight among
the slaves and advised their arming as the quickest way to end
the war. 104 In subsequent months similar demands were made. 105

Of particular interest is the letter from a Negro physician, G.
P. Miller, of Battle Creek, Michigan, to Secretary of War Came-
ron, written October 30, 1861, offering “. . .from five to ten
thousand free men to report in sixty days to take any position
that may be assigned to us (sharpshooters preferred). . . If this
proposition is not accepted we will, if armed and equipped by
the government, fight as guerrillas.” 106

The next year the idea of the arming of the Negroes was
put forth with increasing urgency and, finally, in August, 1862,
the enlistment of free Negroes as soldiers was authorized. 107
The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued September
22, 1862, promised that, on the first day of the new year, the
government of the United States “will recognize and maintain
the freedom” of people held in bondage by rebels and “will

TO BE FREE

7 *

do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in
any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”

On the designated day the President declared such persons
free “and that the Executive Government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recog-
nize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” The great
pronouncement went on to urge these individuals “to abstain
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense.”

And an Abolitionist, General Rufus Saxton, commanding
Negro troops in South Carolina, had the pleasure of calling his
men together and fulfilling the vision of Walker and Garnet and
Brown, for he told them, after reading the Proclamation:

It is your duty to carry this good news to your brethren who are still
in slavery. Let all your voices, like merry bells join loud and clear in the
grand chorus of liberty “We are free,” "We are free” — until listening,
you shall hear its echoes coming back from every cabin in the land —
"We are free,” “We are free .” 108

In addition to those who wrote and spoke militantly there
were some who actually entered the South and brought the
message of freedom to the slaves. How much influence was thus
brought to bear on the carrying out of slave plots and uprisings
is not certain but it must have had some effect. 100 The activity
of these people was, of course, illegal and meant great personal
danger. Secrecy was, therefore, characteristic, thus making its
recording very difficult, and, no doubt, fragmentary.

The names of some of these people are, however, known.
Mention has already been made of John Brown and James
Redpath. Other white people who carried on this type of work
are Alexander M. Ross, William L. Chaplin, Charles Torrey,
Calvin Fairbank, Richard Dillingham, Delia Webster, and John
Fairfield. 110

The latter, a native Virginian, whose years of activity as a
liberator extended from approximately 1844 to 1856, believed
that every slave was justly entitled to freedom, and that if any
person came between him and liberty, the slave had a perfect
right to shoot him down. 111 He always went about heavily armed
himself, and did not scruple to use his weapons whenever he
thought the occasion required this.

This man, who is supposed to have led hundreds of slaves to

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

73

freedom from every southern state, and to have taken part in
several pitched battles, was captured only once and jailed in
Bracken, Kentucky, but managed to escape within a short time.
It was the belief of his friend, Levi Coffin, that Fairfield was one
of the white men hanged in Tennessee in 1856 because of com-
plicity in slave plots. This is not certain, though it is a fact
that this remarkable person drops out of the picture in that year.

Free Negroes and escaped slaves were especially active in this
type of endeavor. For example, Harriet Tubman, one of the
most amazing women that ever lived, carried on her personal
emancipation crusade in a fashion very similar to that of John
Fairfield, but she, happily, lived to see emancipation a fact. 112
Others who went into the dragon's mouth were Josiah Henson,
William Still, Elijah Anderson, and John Mason. The leading
authority on the subject has estimated that, from Canada alone,
in 1860, five hundred Negroes went into the South to rescue their
brothers and carry the word of liberty among them. 113

Some idea of the effect upon the Negro population of the
mere presence of a sincere anti-slavery person, who did little
more than make clear her sentiments, appears in a letter from a
former resident of Massachusetts, Mrs. Louisa Leland, to her
Boston friend, Mary Ann Halliburton. 114 Mrs. Leland begins
by assuring her friend that her residence in the South has, far
from altering her Abolitionist views, rather strengthened them,
and that she has therefore refrained from using slave labor. As
a servant she hired a Negro woman. Rose,

a very intelligent black woman, who had just purchased her freedom
by her own exertions. She was glad to remain in the neighborhood of
her children whom she is endeavoring to free also and as we assured her
of protection and high wages she gladly came to live with us. It would
gladden your heart to hear her speak of the abolitionists of the North.
I was reading to my husband a letter from Mrs. Childs 116 not observing
that Rose was in the room until on looking up I perceived her whole
countenance glowing with delight and her eyes sparkling. As soon as
my husband had gone she said to me: Do you know Mrs. Childs. Do
tell me about her. I wish her benevolent heart may often receive as
much pleasure as I did in witnessing the gratitude and interest with
which this woman heard the story of her goodness. She sat in perfect
silence — but when I ceased only exclaimed fervently: God will bless her.
The names of Garrison, Phillips and others whom we have so often
heard together are often spoken of by the slaves with deepest feeling. . .

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74

The first of August 116 is generally observed among the slaves when-
ever they can do it wit^ut incurring punishment. Knowing this, I told
Rose to celebrate the day at our plantation 117 where they could be
secure from interruption. I have heard eloquence and seen deep feeling
manifested at the North on this day, but I never was so deeply moved
as on witnessing this scene: They had raised a little arbor, which was
decorated with flowers, where a few of the speakers stood. Never shall
I forget the sight: an old man nearly eighty years old, blind and very
infirm had been brought by his children to the meeting. They had
succeeded in purchasing his freedom, which they preferred to their

own and now by the kind help of some Northern abolitionists, they

had purchased their own and had within a few days received their free
papers and were on the point of starting for the Land of Freedom. The
old man took the most earnest farewell of his friends around, and then
knelt in prayer. The whole assembly fell on their knees on the green
turf — and a prayer ascended to Heaven, which it seemed to me must
call down angels to help them. Tears streamed from his sightless eyes, as
he thanked God for this day and prayed that its blessing might be
extended over the whole race. Then he prayed for their masters, and
with the voice and manner of a saint, he lifted his hands to heaven,
and exclaimed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do“
— and alas! I thought have they even that excuse to plead?

The data here presented point to the conclusion that the
existence of militant Abolitionism was widespread and deep-
rooted. It appears to have been particularly common among the
Negro people themselves, especially those who had escaped from
the delights of the patriarchal paradise. In the decade of crisis,
1850-1860, the acceptance of this philosophy was fairly general
among all Abolitionists.

The narrative of its development is an important part of the
entire story of the anti-slavery crusade, and makes more under-
standable the growth of a temperament in the North necessary
to a people who successfully waged a terribly bloody Civil War,
and whose chosen leader, in the midst of the carnage, declared
that “if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so it still must be said ‘the judg-
ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether/ "

NEGRO CASUALTIES
IN THE CIVIL WAR

In this chapter we shall examine one phase of the American
Negro's efforts to break his chains. We shall attempt to ascertain
the facts in regard to the blood he expended in the suppression
of the slaveholders' counter-revolution, and in the cause of
national unity and the extermination of chattel slavery.

It might well be believed that some eighty years after such
a contest the victor would have compiled and preserved precise
data concerning its martyrs, but the truth is otherwise. Official
statistics exist but their presentation in the original sources is
accompanied by qualifications and warnings which, though often
unheeded in secondary works, are of a most serious character.

Thus, the War Department, in republishing, in part, the
report of the Provost Marshal General to Secretary of War
Stanton, made in March, 1866, added that revisions had decidedly
changed the over-all casualty picture. It went on to offer correc-
tions as of 1885, and then added: “The foregoing figures, how-
ever, are only approximative and should not be accepted as
conclusive. Revision of the death record is still [i.e., as of 1900]
in progress." 1

In the standard statistical study of losses during the Civil
War, published a generation after the event, it was stated:

Only a few of the regiments, comparatively, made official reports for
the actions in which they were engaged ... of the official battle reports
. . . but few gave the figures for their casualties. ... In the nominal lists
of wounded men no distinction was made between the mortally, seri-
ously, or slightly wounded; and the list of missing failed to show whether
the men were captured or belonged to the class whose fate was un-
known. Too often, no return whatever was made. As a result the
statistics of our last war are, in many instances, meager and unsatisfac-
tory; and, in some cases are wanting entirely . 2

75

TO BE FREE

At this point but one deficiency will be particularized. Official
figures state that over 29,000 Union soldiers died in the hands
of the enemy, but authorities have conjectured that the correct
figure for this category of deaths is probably closer to 45,000,
and some have placed the number as high as 70,000. The fact
is that no one can say with any assurance how many Federal
soldiers died in the hands of the Confederacy because no records
were obtained from fourteen of its major prisoner-of-war camps
and only partial records from six others. 3

As one would expect, the statistical picture with regard to
Negro casualties in the Union Army is even less satisfactory than
that for the organization as a whole. There are several reasons
for this, but at this point we wish to mention but one. On the
testimony of an individual who participated as an enlisted man
in two different Negro regiments— serving both in the West and
in the East— it was a common practice for Negro units to fail to
report deaths, but rather to enlist other Negroes, assign them the
names of the deceased, and carry on as before. Given the legal
anonymity of the slave, the carelessness of official record-keeping
in any personal sense where he was concerned, and the fact
that by this process it was possible to collect the undisbursed
back pay of the casualty, one can easily believe this assertion. 4

With these precautionary remarks by way of introduction, let
us present the latest revised official casualty figures for Negro
troops in the service of the United States Army during the Civil
War. According to these data, out of 7,122 officers and 178,975
enlisted men, or a combined strength of 186,097, a total of 324
officers and 36,523 enlisted men lost their lives, from all causes,
known and unknown, making a grand total of casualties, in the
form of deaths, among what were referred to as the United States
Colored Troops, of 36,847. 5 Of the total number of deaths 2,870
were killed in action or mortally wounded, while 29,756 died of
disease. 6

Before analyzing these figures in some detail, it is necessary
to clear up a few common misconceptions concerning them.
George W. Williams, for example, in his valuable work, wrote:
“From first to last there were 178,975 Negro soldiers in the
United States Volunteer Army and of these 36,847 were killed,

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 77

wounded and missing/' 7 It will be noticed that here Williams
is repeating the figure for total deaths among officers and en-
listed men, but is citing the total enrollment of enlisted men
only. 8 More important, however, is the fact that Williams uses
the figures for deaths to cover not only the deceased, but the
wounded, as well. This represents complete, though uninten-
tional, distortion.

Statistics are available for the total number of wounded but
they are not broken down in terms of Negro and white. Yet
these over-all figures are helpful for they provide a ratio that may
be applied, probably with fair accuracy, to the Negro troops.
There was a total of 67,058 men reported as killed in action,
and another 43,012 who were mortally wounded, while 275,175
were wounded other than mortally, given then a ratio of
wounded to killed and mortally wounded of roughly 2.75 to l. e
Applying this ratio to the number of officers and enlisted men
of the United States Colored Troops killed and mortally
wounded (2,870), it will be seen that an addition of 7,893 must
immediately be made to the official statistics of casualties among
such troops. 10

Let us now subject the official figures of mortalities among
regiments of the United States Colored Troops to some analysis.
The final Civil War report of the Provost Marshal General
pointed out that total loss (that is, including the figures for
deaths, desertions and discharges of all types) among white vol-
unteer troops from the twenty-four loyal states equaled the ratio
of 314.65 casualties per 1,000 men furnished, while for the Col-
ored Troops this figure was 290.82. If, however, one adds the
casualty figures for those killed in action plus those who died
of disease only, in other words, if one seeks the facts as to loss
of life, one finds that the ratio for white volunteers is 94.32 per
thousand ( i.e ., 35.10 killed plus 59.22 died of disease), while
that for the United States Colored Troops is equal to 157.50 per
thousand {i.e., 16.11 killed plus 141.39 died of disease). Thus,
official statistics show that the ratio of mortal casualties among
the United States Colored Troops was 47.06 per thousand greater
than that of the United States Volunteer Troops from the twenty-
four loyal states. 11 If the Regular Army troops, comprising but
67,000, were added to the figures for the Volunteer units the dis-

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crepancy between white and Negro would be still greater, for the
ratio of mortalities among them was but 72.82 per 1,000.

Putting the figures in terms of percentages we find, according
to the revised official data, that of the slightly over two million
troops in the United States Volunteers, over 316,000 died (from
all causes) , or 15.2 per cent. Of the 67,000 Regular Army (white)
troops, 8.6 per cent, or not quite 6,000, died. Of the approxi-
mately 180,000 United States Colored Troops, however, over
36,000 died, or 20.5 per cent. 12 In other words, the mortality
rate among the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War
was 35 per cent greater than that among other troops, notwith-
standing the fact that the former were not enrolled until some
eighteen months after the fighting began!

The data then, as presented by the official figures concerning
Negroes federally organized in the Army, far from substantiating
the widely held belief that the Negro people were passive re-
cipients of liberation as an incident of a civil conflict, demon-
strate that, in terms of the supreme sacrifice, they expended very
much more than their proportionate share, and did this in spite
of the long delay on the part of the nation in accepting them
into the armed services.

The disproportion is so great, in view of the circumstances,
that it is incumbent upon the historian to attempt to offer some
explanations for the condition. As has been shown, by far the
greatest single cause of death, for all troops, was disease, and
this was particularly true for the Negro troops. It has been seen
that the ratio of deaths from disease per 1,000, among the Col-
ored Troops was over 140, while for the Volunteer Troops it
was under 60. Put in the words of the Surgeon-General of the
Army, in his report of October 20, 1866, among white troops
the proportion of deaths, from all causes, to cases treated was
one to every fifty-two/* but with the Colored Troops “the mor-
tality rate [was] one death to every twenty-nine cases treated.” 18

The facts become more dramatic when individual regiments
are considered. Of the over 2,000 regiments which made up Lin-
coln's Army, of which about eight per cent were Negro, the one
having the greatest number of mortal casualties was the 5th
U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery with a total of 829 deaths (eight
being officers), of which 124 occurred in battle and 697 because

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 79

of disease and accidents. And the regiment having the second
greatest number of deaths in the entire army was the 65th U. S.
Colored Infantry, which took part in no battles, but lost from
disease and accidents a total of 755 persons, six of whom were
officers. Other Negro regiments stand very high on the mortality
list. Thus, the regiment with the fourth highest number of
deaths was the 56th U. S. Colored Infantry, with a total of 25
killed in battle (four officers), and 649 (two officers), dying of
disease. 14

It is apparent, then, that finding explanations for the heavy
mortality from disease in Negro regiments will go far towards
accounting for their abnormally high casualty rates. A good
summarization of some of the factors involved here was pre-
sented by the Army's Provost Marshal General when he was
offering reasons for the very much lower death rate from disease
among officers than among enlisted men, for many of the dis-
tinctions which he makes in the conditions confronting enlisted
men as compared to commissioned officers prevailed as concerns
Negro and white— regardless of rank.

Officers [wrote the Provost Marshal] are better sheltered than men;

and their food is generally better in quality and more varied in kind

They are not so much crowded together in tents and quarters. . . . They
have superior advantages in regard to personal cleanliness. As prisoners
of war, too, they were generally treated more leniently. . . . Another
favoring circumstance, and by no means the least potential, was the
superior morale. . . . 15

Turning to the specific problem, we find several factors to
be of great consequence in explaining the excessive Negro
casualty rate. It was found difficult, for example, to find quali-
fied surgeons to serve with Negro troops, and the War Depart-
ment was not anxious to commission available Negro physicians.

According to Major General Banks, writing while in com-
mand of the Department of the Gulf:

... In the organization of the colored regiments there was a serious want
of Surgeons. Competent men declined to enter the service. It was impos-
sible to get good officers to accept such commissions. In very many
cases Hospital Stewards of low order of qualification were appointed
to the office of Assistant Surgeon and Surgeon. Well grounded objec-

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tions were made from every quarter against the inhumanity of subject-
ing the colored soldiers to medical treatment and surgical operations
from such men. It was an objection that could not be disregarded
without bringing discredit upon the Army and the Government. 16

A less abstract objection, too, appeared at once and brought
“remonstrances” from “officers of high rank” who pointed out
“that in the exigencies of battle any officer might be subjected
to the necessity of surgical treatment” by these untrained indi-
viduals. “Application was made to the Surgeon General at Wash-
ington, for Surgeons, but without success.” Finally, a prominent
physician, Dr. J. V. C. Smith, was prevailed upon to tour the
nation’s medical schools, particularly those in New England,
and he seems to have had some success in obtaining, at long
last, some fairly competent young medical graduates to serve as
surgeons with Negro units. 17

There were, of course, Negro physicians, but, to this writer’s
knowledge, only eight were ever appointed surgeons in the Army,
and six of these were attached to hospitals in Washington, not
to units, while the other two remained with Negro regiments
for a very short time. 18

The army career of one of these Negro physicians will illus-
trate some of the problems involved and will cast light on the
conditions to which the enlisted men were subjected. On April
14, 1863, “Dr. A. T. Augusta (colored) was appointed Surgeon
of U. S. Colored Troops, having been examined and found
qualified.” 10 He was assigned to the 7th United States Colored
Infantry and went with them into garrison at Camp Stanton,
near Bryan town, in Maryland. He was the senior surgeon among
the Negro troops stationed there. In February, 1864, the two
(white) assistant surgeons of the 7th, as well as the surgeons and
assistant surgeons of the 9th and 19th regiments of Negro in-
fantry, addressed a letter to Abraham Lincoln. It reads as
follows:

When we made application for position on the Colored Service, the
understanding was universal that all commissioned officers were to be
white men. Judge of our surprise when, upon joining our respective
regiments, we found that the Senior Surgeon of the Command was a
Negro.

We claim to be behind no one, in a desire for the elevation and im-

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 8l

provement of the colored race in this Country, and we are willing to
sacrifice much in so grand a cause, as our present positions may testify.
But we cannot in any cause willingly compromise what we consider a
proper self-respect; nor do we deem that the interests of either the
country or of the colored race, can demand this of us. Such degrada-
tion, we believed to be involved in our voluntarily continuing in the
service, as subordinate to a colored officer. We therefore most respect-
fully, yet earnestly, request that this unexpected, unusual, and most
unpleasant relationship in which we have been placed, may in some
way be terminated. 20

Such attitudes coming from surgeons of Negro regiments who
professed to be friendly to the men they were employed to serve
may go far to help explain the abnormally high mortality rate
from disease which marked those regiments.

The “unpleasant relationship” was “terminated” by placing
Dr. Augusta on detached service examining Negro recruits at
Benedict and Baltimore, Maryland, throughout 1864, and on
recruiting service in the Department of the South until the
termination of hostilities. Note of one further fact connected
with this Negro physician is significant. Fully a year after being
commissioned, Dr. Augusta found it necessary to tell Senator
Henry Wilson that the army paymaster at Baltimore had “re-
fused to pay him more than seven dollars per month” [the pay
of Negro enlisted men after clothing deduction] and that this
payment had been rejected. A letter from the Massachusetts
Senator to the Secretary of War, on April 10, 1864, resulted in
an order, two days later, to the Paymaster General to compen-
sate the surgeon “according to his rank.” 21

The whole concept behind, and the general practice in, the
employment of Negro troops by the Union Army help explain
their excessive mortality rates. The hesitancy with which the
Federal government moved in employing Negroes as soldiers is
an oft-repeated story. Even the law of July 17, 1862, by which
Congress finally authorized the President to employ Negro troops,
is highly revealing. The law stated that the President might, if
he wished, receive Negroes “into the service of the United States,
for the purpose of constructing entrenchments, or performing
camp service, or any other labor, or any military or naval service
for which they may be found competent.” 22

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Similarly, the General-in-Chief of the Federal Army, Major-
General Halleck, hearing, some nine months later, of a reluc-
tance among certain officers in General Grant's command to use
Negro troops, wrote him, unofficially, that the government now
was committed to their use, particularly “as a military force
for the defence of forts, depots, etc. ... If they can be used to
hold points on the Mississippi during the sickly season, it will
afford much relief to our armies." The division in the thinking
of the Commanding General revealed here as between Negro
troops on the one hand and "our armies" on the other is note-
worthy. 28

Data clearly establishing the misuse of Negro troops are avail-
able. Thus, Brigadier General Q. A. Gillmore, in command of
the Department of the South, issued a General Order (No. 77)
on September 17, 1863, the first paragraph of which read as
follows:

It has come to the knowledge of the brigadier general commanding
that detachments of colored troops, detailed for fatigue duty, have been
employed in one instance at least, to prepare camps and perform menial
duty for white troops. Such use of these details is unauthorized and
improper, and is hereafter expressly prohibited. Commanding officers
of colored regiments are directed to report promptly, to these head-
quarters, any violations of this order which may come to their knowl-
edge^

Eight days later, the Commissioner for the Organization of
Colored Troops reported to the Secretary of War from Nashville
that "the colored men here are treated like brutes; any officer
who wants them, I am told, impresses on his own authority; and
it is seldom that they are paid ... one was shot." 25 From the
same city, on the next day, twenty "citizens of Tennessee" wrote
Mr. Stanton that Negroes were receiving the "harshest treat-
ment . . . more that of a brute than of a human being." 26

Notwithstanding the explicit character of General Gillmore's
order, the same officer found it necessary, on November 25, 1863,
to issue another General Order (No. 105) calling attention to
the fact that he had

heretofore had occasion to rebuke officers of this command for impos-
ing improper labors upon colored troops. He is now informed that

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8 3

the abuses sought to be corrected still exist. Attention is called to
General Orders No. 77, current series, from these headquarters, and
commanding officers are enjoined to see to its strict enforcement.
Colored troops will not be required to perform any labor which is not
shared by the white troops, but will receive, in all respects, the same
treatment and be allowed the same opportunities for drill and instruc-
tions. 27

The next month two officers, a captain and a brigadier-general,
were sent, separately, from the adjutant general's office into the
field to look into this particular phase of the handling of Negro
troops. The captain was directed to investigate conditions in
the Department of the South, under General Gillmore. On the
twentieth he reported that excessive fatigue details were still
assigned Negro troops, but that he had been told that this did
not prevail in so aggravated a degree as heretofore. 28 The general
was ordered to make an over all survey of conditions, and he
reported that, as a rule, Negro troops were used excessively for
fatigue and labor details. 29

At this same time the commanding officer of the 14th U. S.
Colored Infantry was writing that

It behooves the friends of this movement [i.*., the use of Negroes as
soldiers] to secure a favorable decision from the great tribunal — public
opinion. This cannot be done by making laborers of these troops. . . .
[It is] degrading to single out Colored Troops for fatigue duty, while
white soldiers stand by. . . . 30

It may be pointed out that there is some evidence to show
that this was precisely the reasoning of those who were any-
thing but "friends of this movement." Thus, Brigadier-General
Daniel Ullman, in command of a Negro brigade in Louisiana,
told William Cullen Bryant, the editor-in-chief of the New York
Post, in a postscript to a letter marked "Private and Confiden-
tial," that he was hearing some interesting things now that
Negro troops had borne so heroic a part in the successful storm-
ing of a fortified place, as his troops had done at Port Hudson.
He wrote:

If it were not so serious I should be much amused at these pro-
slavery Generals. Before the assault of the 27th May last [1863] on
this place, their ridicule of the idea that the blacks would fight was

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constant, They then swing to the other side — forsooth they fight too
well. “We must not discipline them,” for if we do, we will have to
fight them some day ourselves. Above all we must keep artillery out
of their hands. A few pro-slavery Generals actually had the effontery
to use such language to me. 81

In September, 1863, the Commissioner for the Organization
of Colored Troops complained that his work was being hindered
by the “brutal” treatment accorded Negroes. Half a year later,
in a letter to Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, the same indi-
vidual declared that:

... a General Order from the War Department compelling the same
Treatment to Colored as White troops, and securing Negroes from
brutal treatment [was needed]; and until that is done they will be at
the mercy of any officer from Colonel up, who chooses to vent his spite
or air his prejudice on them. There is no use of half measures. If Mr.
Stanton was as much in earnest as his Adjutant General [Lorenzo]
Thomas, in this matter of protecting Colored men, one half of the
abuses that are now so numerous w r ould cease. 32

Brigadier-General Ullman who, in March, 1864, was com-
plaining of the misuse of his Negro unit in a “private and con-
fidential” letter to so influential a civilian as William Cullen
Bryant, some six weeks later decided to place the matter, offi-
cially, before the Army’s Adjutant General. He declared:

There is a topic to which I desire to draw your attention. Doubtless
you have already considered it So far, colored troops in this Depart-
ment [of the Gulf], have been used chiefly for fatigue duty. I much
fear, unless there shall be a radical change, they never will be otherwise
used in this Department. I have been striving for the year past to obtain
an opportunity to bring my special command into shape as soldiers, not
laborers. The 1st Brigade of my Division was ordered to the front some
three weeks ago. I learn they are used simply on “fatigue duty.” . . .

I humbly suggest, then, they should not be kept in the background,
and continue to be kept degraded as simply laborers. If they are thus
treated in the future, as they have been in the past, we may be sure
their morale will be entirely destroyed.

In January, 1863, Colonel James Montgomery was authorized
to raise a regiment of Negro infantry. He proceeded to do so,
but as of May, 1864, its organization was still incomplete. The

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85

Commanding General of the Department of the South asked
the Colonel to explain this deficiency, and on May 2 the latter
did so. He pointed out that a considerable part of his regiment
(the 34th U. S. Colored Infantry) was raised soon after authoriza-
tion and that it took part, under General Gillmore, in the fight-
ing which culminated in July, 1863, with the capture of Morris
Island, South Carolina. Immediately thereafter, however, con-
tinued the Colonel: 33

My men were then put into trenches and batteries, or detailed to
mount guns, haul cannon and mortars, and were kept constantly and
exclusively on fatigue duty of the severest kind 34 To fill the heavy de-
tails which were made upon my fraction of a regiment, I frequently
had to take men who had been on duty from 4 o’clock in the morning
until sundown to make up the detail called for, for the night, and men
who had been in the trenches in the night were compelled to go on
duty again at least part of the day.

Inspections, drills, care of weapons, rest were impossible, and,
“As might be expected this kind of service soon filled our hospi-
tal with broken down men. Such were my opportunities,” con-
cluded the Colonel, “from the 1st of July [1863] to the 1st of
January [1864] to make soldiers of my recruits, and to complete
my organization.”

The blanket War Department order recommended by Major
Stearns in his letter of March, 1864, to Senator Wilson seems
never to have been issued, but something approximating it did
appear a few months later. By order of the Secretary of War
the following directive appeared on June 14, 1864:

The incorporation into the Army of the United States of Colored
Troops, renders it necessary that they should be brought as speedily as
possible to the highest state of discipline. Accordingly the practice which
has hitherto prevailed, no doubt from necessity, of requiring these troops
to perform most of the labor of fortifications, and the labor and fatigue
duties of permanent stations and camps, will cease, and they will only
be required to take their fair share of fatigue duty with white troops.
This is necessary to prepare them for the higher duties of conflict with
the enemy. 35

The enforcement provision of this order, however, was weak
for it declared that “Commanders of Colored Troops, in cases

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where the troops under their commands are required to perform
an excess of labor above white troops in the same command,
will represent the case to the common superior , through the
regular channels.”**

Indeed, five months later, and but a few months before the
termination of hostilities, the general who signed the above
order confessed to the man responsible for it that “Where white
and black troops come together in the same command, the lat-
ter have to do all the work. At first this was always the case, and
in vain did I endeavor to correct it.” He w^ent on to say that
since the Negro troops had thoroughly proved themselves in
battle this practice had somewhat declined, but it had by no
means ceased. 37

Finally, the fact may be mentioned that several Negro regi-
ments were specifically organized for fatigue duty, and were to
be “composed of all classes of colored men capable of perform-
ing the ordinary duties of a military depot.” That is to say, they
were not to be composed, as were combat regiments, “of such
men only as can pass the physical examination required of all
men entering the military service.” It was provided that as soon
as these units were organized they were to be “subject to such
details for fatigue duty as the Commanding General of the De-
partment may direct” 38

Actually, there were seven such “fatigue” Negro regiments,
the 42nd, 63rd, 64th, 69th, 101st, 123rd, and 124th, but at least
three of them, though composed of the type of men already indi-
cated and though not trained for combat, did do battle with
Confederate troops. Thus, the 63rd fought in Louisiana and
Mississippi in April, June, and September, 1864; the 64th in
the same states in May and June, 1864; and the 101st in Ala-
bama in January, 1865. 39

There were manifestations of this second-rate consideration
of Negro troops in addition to their frequent relegation to the
generally demoralizing, unpleasant and unhealthy garrison, fa-
tigue, and labor details.

Thus, it is clear that Negro troops were not equipped as well
as others. Until the equalization of pay in June, 1864, the cloth-
ing allowance for all Negroes came to $36 per year while that
for the lowest ranking whites equalled $42. Moreover, frequent

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 87

complaints arose from the Negroes that the hard labor and
extraordinary hours of duty required of them prevented proper
care of what clothing and equipment they did have. 40

It has been pointed out that the regiment suffering the second
highest number of deaths in the entire Union Army was the
65th U. S. Colored Infantry. This was true notwithstanding the
fact that the unit was not sent into the field until January, 1864,
and that it never engaged in combat.

The regiment was recruited throughout Missouri during the
winter of 1863, and men were sent, in December of that year,
to Benton Barracks, many without hats or shoes, thinly clad,
and some traveling great distances with no feeding provisions
having been made. There were numerous instances of frozen
extremities and deaths following amputations of arms and legs,
as well as many cases of disease. The regiment suffered over one
hundred deaths in the less than two months spent in Missouri,
prior to its use for guard, garrison, and fatigue duties along the
Mississippi. 41

As a rule, the weapons provided Negro troops were of an
inferior quality. Memoranda from the Inspector General's de-
partment comment on the fact that while Negro units were usu-
ally equal to others in discipline, conduct, and bearing, their
efficiency was curtailed because, for example, the arms within
several regiments were of different kinds. 42 Again, early in 1864,
the Adjutant-General of the Army, after having inspected a
Negro regiment in New Orleans, wrote to his assistant that it,
“like the other Colored Troops, is armed with the old flint lock
musket altered to percussion, turned in by the white volunteers,
and some of them twice condemned.” 43

Individual commanders frequently and urgently complained
about this condition. Brigadier-General Ullman, for example,
asserted that he had been forced to put in the hands of his
Negro soldiers “arms almost entirely unserviceable, and in other
respects, their equipment have been of the poorest kind.” 44
Again, somewhat later, Brigadier-General J. Hawkins, command-
ing the 1st Brigade, U. S. Colored Troops, appealed to the War
Department, for the issuance of suitable weapons. The next
month the Assistant Secretary of War declared that the Depart-
ment had never intended “that the colored soldiers should be

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armed with inferior weapons/' He asserted, moreover, his belief
that the foreign arms turned in by another commander, repaired
by ordnance and now in the hands of Hawkins’ men, could not
“be properly called inferior,” but, he added, that since “your
officers and men” think otherwise, “new muskets” would be
forwarded “as soon as they can be.” 45

There is significance, in this connection, in the remark of the
heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts
Infantry, made shortly before his death, that there was serious
talk at one time “of the arming of Negro troops with pikes in-
stead of firearms. Whoever proposed it must have been looking
ior a means of annihilating Negro troops altogether. . . . The
project is now abandoned I believe.” 46 According to B. Gratz
Brown, United States Senator from Missouri, it had been cus-
tomary, for a time, “to prevent the Negro regiments from having
any arms put into their hands until they left the State [wherein
they had been raised, and, presumably, given preparatory train-
ing]; but representations in regard to this were made to the
proper authorities, and the evil has been corrected.” 47

Specific contemporary references directly linking the poor arms
of Negro troops with excessive battle casualties occasionally
occur. This is true, for example, of the famous engagement at
Milliken’s Bend, Mississippi, where Negro troops predominated,
and where total casualties surpassed 370 out of about 1,100 Union
troops involved. Charles Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, who
was in the area at the time, believed the great losses to be due
in part to the inferior weapons of the Negroes, and the fact that
they had received even these but “a few days before battle.” 48

Again, in reporting the engagement near Simmsport, Louisi-
ana, of May 17, 1864, the commanding officer of the 92nd U. S.
Colored Infantry declared that the enemy was forced back
though, “The Regiment was and is now, armed with Springfield,
smooth-bore muskets, of very inferior and defective quality;
many of them becoming useless at the first fire.” 49

In terms of training for combat, Negro troops were at a serious
disadvantage as compared with white soldiers. Excessive fatigue
duty given Negro troops and their poorer equipment has already
been indicated. The typical remark of but one commanding
officer of Negro troops need be quoted on this subject: “Since

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 89

I have been in command, such has been the amount of fatigue
work thrust upon the organization that it has been with the
utmost difficulty that any time could be set aside for drill.” 50

Another burden borne by the Negro soldier of the Civil War
was poor leadership. Available evidence forces one to the con-
clusion that, with a few notable exceptions (as in the Massachu-
setts Negro regiments, and the 1st Regiment of Kansas Colored
Infantry, later the 79th U. S. Colored Infantry) the caliber of
officers in Negro regiments was poorer than elsewhere. This is
said with full realization of the fact that much of the criticism
directed against such officers was based on bigotry, and so must
be discounted in large part. 51

Yet, solid evidence remains. Thus, for example, a brigadier-
general, sent on an inspection tour of Negro units, reported in
December, 1863, that the quality of their officers, though lately
improved, was still poor. 52 Another general, himself commanding
Negro troops, declared in the same period:

I well know that those prophets who declare that negroes never will
make soldiers are striving to force their prophecies to work out their
own fulfillment, by appointing ignoramuses and boors to be officers over
men who are as keensighted as any to notice the short-comings of those
placed over them. Men have been made Field Officers in this section,
who are not fit to be non-commissioned officers. 53

Another reference to the alleged existence of a conspiracy to
appoint incompetents as officers in Negro units occurs in a
somewhat earlier letter to President Lincoln from one Major
A. E. Borey, the Provost Marshal of the Norfolk-Portsmouth
area in Virginia. How closely this letter approximates the actual
truth, it is, of course, very difficult to say, but the position of its
author and the character of its charges warrant complete presen-
tation. Major Borey assured the President that the:

. . . majority of our officers of all grades have no sympathy with your
policy [of enlisting Negroes and emancipating slaves]; nor with any-
thing human. They hate the Negro more than they love the Union and
you would probably suppose that such men would not seek or accept
positions — in the Negro Regts.; not so however. There is a regular cabal
here among the very worst class of Negro hating officers, to secure &
parcel out to themselves 8c others like themselves, all those places. . . .
These men have at this moment two agents in Washington under pay —

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sent there from here — to secure the appontments [sic] in this force,
all the way down from Brigadier to Captain. For God’s sake dont [sic]
let this black Army fall into such hands. . .

Brutality - beating, bucking, gagging, hanging by thumbs -
occasionally characterized the treatment of white 55 as well as
Negro Union soldiers, but this appears to have been very much
more common for the latter. And such refinements as pouring
molasses over the naked bodies of enlisted men and forcing them
to remain with arms outstretched in this manner for an entire
day and night seem to have been confined to Negro troops. 56

On the other hand, it is refreshing to note that in at least two
cases white officers of Negro regiments went to very great lengths
to defend their men. Thus, Colonel Isaac F. Shepard while
commanding the 1st Mississippi Regiment of Colored Infantry
ordered his soldiers to whip a white soldier. He did this because
of the crime (unspecified) committed by the white soldier, “one
calling for the severest punishment, even to the loss of life,” and
because “complaints to the [culprit's] commanding officer
[brought] no action." A Board of Officers exonerated the Colonel,
an action approved by General Grant. 57

Of even greater interest was the case involving twenty-eight
officers of the 3rd U. S. Colored Cavalry. On April 24, 1864, at
Haines Bluff, Mississippi, these officers hanged a cotton trader
named W. B. Wooster, after a kangaroo trial, because Wooster
had praised the massacre of Southern white and Negro Federal
troops by Confederate forces at Fort Pillow after its surrender.
Colonel Schofield, of the Regiment, defended his officers and
declared they were his best men, but the endorsement of three
generals (Hawkins, Slocum, McPherson) advised dismissal.
What final action was taken in this case has not been discovered. 58

It is revealing that the headquarters charged with raising
Negro troops in east and middle Tennessee found it necessary
to declare in February, 1864, that:

No person is wanted as an officer in a Colored Regiment who “feels
that he is making a sacrifice in accepting a position in a Colored Regi-
ment, or who desires the place simply for higher rank and pay. ... It
can be no “sacrifice” to any man to command in a service which gives
liberty to slaves, and manhood to chattels, as well as soldiers to the
Union . 68

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 91

Shortly thereafter, Major-General Rosecrans, commanding the
Department of the Missouri, in referring to a Board whose duties
were to enquire into the capabilities of and make recommenda-
tions concerning candidates for commissions with Negro troops,
felt impelled to call

the attention of all officers in the Department whose duty it may be-
come to forward applications from officers or enlisted men under their
command to appear before the Board to the fact that in many cases
heretofore, it would appear, applicants have been recommended for
no other apparent purpose than to get rid of worthless or obnoxious
men, or to obtain in this way a furlough to visit St. Louis . 60

This practice was ordered to cease, and applicants were to be
forwarded, in the future, only after “due deliberation."

Negro units suffered not only from poor arms, poor equip-
ment, poor training, and poor officers, but, in addition, their
method of employment in combat seems to have been conducive,
frequently, to excessive casualties. The recurrent Confederate
charge that Federal forces invariably used Negro troops as breast-
works and cannon fodder was exaggerated, but there were in-
stances in which such a procedure does seem to have been fol-
lowed— as at Fort Wagner, Port Hudson, Paducah, and Olustee.

It is, moreover, significant that one of the reasons for altering
the original order for the Battle of the Mine at Petersburg,
which called for Negro troops to lead the assault, was official
concern over the charge of reckless expenditure of such units. 81
Ironically enough, the last-minute change in plans bred confu-
sion, and helped bring on the repulse of the white troops.
Following this demoralizing event Negro soldiers were required
to attack over a littered battlefield, passing by defeated comrades,
and to assault a well-entrenched, elated enemy. The slaughter
was fearful, and Negro casualties in this engagement were much
higher than that sustained by others.

In addition, attention is called to the criminal carelessness
with which Negro units were at times committed. An outstanding
example of this is the use of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry to
storm Fort Wagner. On July 16, 1863, that regiment engaged in
battle on James Island, S. C., and sustained some thirty casual-
ties. Without rest, with very inadequate food, and many sick at
its St. Helena Camp, the unit, depleted by a fatigue detail of

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eighty men, plus a guard detail, was sent on a forced march to
Morris Island. Here, late the next day, it was assigned its lead
position (though having but six hundred men in the line) for
the assault, and in the afternoon of the 18th, tired and hungry,
it commenced its immortal charge.

The lack of earlier planning and preparation for this assault
is almost incredible: None of the company officers, let alone the
enlisted men, had seen a plan of the work they were supposed
to carry by the bayonet; no guide was provided the regiment
advancing over unfamiliar terrain; no engineers accompanied
the regiment; no provisions were made for overcoming the
obstructions to be met prior to gaining the walls themselves;
there was no line of skirmishers, no covering party, and no
special instructions to any of the men engaged, for the first time
in their lives (and having had no training in assaulting fortified
works), in storming a fort. And to top it all, the starting of the
assault was so timed that the approach was perfectly visible to
the crews of the enemy's artillery who took full advantage of
this fact. And the arrival hour was about 7:30 p.m., that is,
when darkness had descended, so that the attackers were not
only in completely unfamiliar surroundings, but had, in addi-
tion, absolutely no visibility!

That the 54th actually reached the parapet, and even entered
the works at some points, could have resulted only from amazing
determination and courage on the part of the enlisted men and
officers involved. Although the regiment suffered about 42 per
cent casualties in this single assault, it is surprising that any
remained unharmed. 62

Undoubtedly of importance in determining the manner of
employing Negroes in combat was the low estimation in which
they, as a people, were generally held. Thus, for example,
early in the war, the Governor of Iowa, in arguing for the use
of Negroes as soldiers, remarked to General Halleck, that, “When
this war is over and we have summed up the entire loss of life
it has imposed on the country I shall not have any regrets if it
is found that a part of the dead are niggers and that all are not
white men.” 63

Similarly, the testimony of one Nathaniel Page, a special
correspondent for the New York Tribune, is relevant. Mr. Page

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93

spent three months at Morris Island, South Carolina, attached
to General Gillmore's headquarters of the Department of the
South. According to his own statement, he was present when
General Gillmore and General Seymour were considering the
Fort Wagner assault. General Seymour expressed the opinion
that he could take the fort.

Said General Gillmore: “Very well, if you think you can take it you
have permission to make the assault. How do you intend to organize
your command?” General Seymour answered: “Well, I guess we will let
[General] Strong [whose brigade contained Negro troops] lead and
put those damned niggers from Massachusetts in the advance; we may
as well get rid of them one time as another.”. . . [General Seymour] is
now an ardent admirer of negro troops. These facts are personally
known to me, and I am willing to swear to their truth . 64

One condition, out of the control of military commanders,
that must certainly have effected the battle casualty rate of the
Negroes was the fact that they entered the war late, and so
were likely to meet battlewise veterans while they themselves
were still novices. There are several combat reports which em-
phasize this fact, and it may well have been a factor of consider-
able importance. 65

The relationship between low morale and high casualties,
particularly from disease, seems to be so close that note must
be taken of an additional factor hurting Negro morale. This
was the discrimination practiced by the government against its
Negro soldiers in the matter of pay. The facts concerning this
are so well known that they need but the briefest summary:
All Negro troops (regardless of rank) from 1862 to 1864 were
offered a monthly wage of ten dollars minus three dollars for
clothing, which was three dollars less than that paid white
privates. This was done notwithstanding the fact that the Negro
recruits had been officially and repeatedly assured, in many
instances, by high military and civil officials (including the
Governor of Massachusetts and the Secretary of War) 66 that they
would receive the same pay, equipment, and rations as any other
United States volunteers.

What is not so well known, however, is the response of the
Negro to this treatment. 67 Very briefly, one may remark that

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94

this discrimination aroused the most hostile and bitter feelings,
and that it was this response, plus the resistance to enlistment
on the part of the Negro, due to it and other evils, which largely
accounted for the equalization of pay, retroactively, on the part
of the Federal government.

Directly, though in a minute way, this affected the subject
of casualties, for the issue of pay precipitated mutinies and near
mutinies which, in turn, resulted in a few executions. Thus,
Sergeant William Walker of the 3rd South Carolina Volunteers
was shot by order of a court-martial for having led the men of
his company to stack arms and to refuse to serve until the agree-
ment under which they enlisted— equal pay— was met. At least
three other Negro soldiers died for similar behavior, and over a
score from one regiment alone (14th Rhode Island Heavy
Artillery) were jailed. 68 The indirect effect of this crass injustice
upon casualties among Negro troops, in terms of impairment
of morale, cannot be determined, but was probably great.

Of some consequence in any consideration of Negro casualties
during the Civil War was the policy adopted by the Confederate
government in regard to Negro troops used against it. Since a
good account, 69 setting forth the main facts in this regard, is
readily available, here it need be but briefly mentioned. The
Confederate government, until the end of 1864, did not consider
Negroes as bona fide soldiers, and therefore refused to treat
them, when captured, in a manner identical with that pursued
with other troops.

Confederate law required that Negro prisoners be turned over
to the authorities of the states wherein they had been captured
tor trial as incendiaries and insurrectionists. White officers of
Negro units were subject to trial by courtmartial, with death
as a prescribed penalty. It does not appear, however, that any
were so tried.

Nevertheless, it is to be noted that James Seddon, the Con-
federate Secretary of War, advised Lieutenant General E. Kirby
Smith that white officers of Negro troops, when captured, “had
best be dealt with red-handed in the field, or immediately there-
after. 70 It is, moreover, a fact that the official casualty figures
show four officers of Negro regiments as having been “killed
after capture, and another as having been “executed by the

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 95

enemy." Certain it is, too, that at least two white officers were
murdered in cold blood and another wounded and left for dead
on December 22, 1864, by Confederate troops near Lewisburg,
Tennessee. 71 Occasionally, too, indignities, or what were believed
to be indignities, were thrust upon such officers, and at times
these resulted fatally. 72

Evidence exists to show that a few Negroes, who had been
free prior to enlistment, were sold into slavery by the Confed-
eracy 78 , but, by and large, they seem to have been “held in strict
confinement, not yet formally recognized ... as prisoners of war,
but, except in some trivial particulars indicative of inferior
consideration, are treated very much in the same manner as our
other captives.” 74

It was, however, common procedure for the Confederacy to
sell into slavery (theoretically to the former owners), Negroes
captured by its armies and declared to have been slaves prior
to enlistment. Where the masters were not found or did not ap-
pear, the armies themselves used the Negroes as laborers. 75

But taking Negroes as prisoners was definitely discouraged by
several Confederate officers, 76 and their murder after capture
was not very unusual. Moreover, advance announcements that
Negroes would not receive protection as prisoners of war, and,
occasionally, even warnings of wholesale extermination, were
not unknown.

Thus, Brigadier-General Buford, besieging Columbus, Ken-
tucky, sent the following note to his Federal opponent on April
13, 1864:

Fully capable of taking Columbus and its garrison by force, I desire
to avoid the shedding of blood, and therefore demand the uncondi-
tional surrender of the forces under your command. Should you sur-
render, the negroes now in arms will be returned to their masters.
Should I however be compelled to take the place, no quarter will be
shown to the negro troops whatever; the white troops will be treated
as prisoners of war . 77

A somewhat similar letter went from General J. B. Hood to the
Union commander at Resaca, Georgia, on October 12, 1864:

I demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of the post and
garrison under your command, and should this be acceded to all

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96

white officers and soldiers will be paroled in a few days. If the place is
carried by assault, no prisoners will be taken. 78

One may not only find instructions advising against the taking
of Negro prisoners, and warnings that none would be taken, or,
if taken that they would be killed, but there is clear evidence
that these instructions and warnings were realized. Examples
in addition to the Fort Pillow massacre 79 exist. Even the incom-
plete data of the Adjutant-General show twenty-one Negro
soldiers as having been “killed after capture." 80 That this is an
underestimation will appear from the following material.

On September 2, 1863, the assistant adjutant-general for Con-
federate General Johnson wrote to a Colonel John Griffith that
he had heard reports of the hanging or shooting, by members of
the latter's command, of “certain federal prisoners and negroes
in arms at Jackson, Louisiana, on August 3 [1863]," and ordered
him ^o investigate and report on this matter. 81 On the same day
Colonel Griffith replied:

In reply to your note just received I would say that a squad of ne-
groes was captured on or about the 3d of August, at Jackson, Louisiana.
When the command started back, the negroes under guard, were ordered
on in advance of the command, and learning that the guard had taken
the wrong road, Colonel Powers and myself rode on in advance to put
them in the proper route for camp. About the time we were reaching
them, ^Dr shortly before, four of the negroes attempted to escape. They
were ^*amediately fired into by the guard; this created some excitement,
and d general stampede among them, whereupon the firing became
genen upon them from the guard, and few, I think, succeeded in
making good their escape. There were no federal [i.e. white] prisoners
among them, having been separated the night previous. No further
particulars remembered.

Colonel Frank Powers, mentioned above, wrote a report of
remarkably similar content, adding only the detail that he gave
the order to shoot down all the Negroes “and with my six shooter
assisted in the execution of the order."

Colonel John L. Logan, the senior of both Griffith and Powers,
in transmitting their statements the next day added, among other
things, the remark: “My own opinion is that the negroes were
summarily disposed of; by whom I cannot say. . . . The whole
transaction was contrary to my wishes, and against my own con-

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 97

sent." This affair seems to have died with the endorsement, dated
Canton, Mississippi, September 17, 1863, by Major-General S. D.
Lee, in forwarding the statements of the three colonels that:

[I] do not consider it to the interests of the service that this matter
be further investigated at present. A Court of Inquiry or a Court
Martial will afford the only means of gaining correct information. 82

An entry in the official return for February 1864, of the 1st
Mississippi Volunteers of African Descent asserted that during
an engagement in Arkansas a picket body was surprised and
surrounded. “The men were captured and most of them brutally
murdered. Fourteen were killed and six wounded." Again, the
entry for March, 1864, of the 3rd U. S. Colored Cavalry reported
that in a Mississippi skirmish, “The enemy captured sixteen men
whom they put to death not even excepting the wounded." 83

The commanding officer of the 8th U. S. Colored Heavy Artil-
lery Regiment informed the Assistant Adjutant General >f the
Army, in August, 1864, that three men of his unit, while on ad-
vance picket duty, had been captured, and then “deliberately
shot," their bodies being “left ... in a heap . . . This fact," it
was declared, “is established beyond any doubt." 84 On September
16, 1864, Confederate troops are reported to have successfully
attacked the bivouac area of 125 men of the 2nd Kansas (white)
Cavalry, and of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. But twen y men
escaped. “All the white soldiers remaining there" were t< ken as
prisoners, but the enemy killed “all the colored soldie s they
could find . . ," 85

Dalton, Georgia, was surrendered to an overwhelming force
of Confederate troops under General Hood on October 13, 1864.
This was done by Colonel L. Johnson of the 44th U. S. Colored
Infantry who commanded, in addition to his own 600 men, about
150 other (white) soldiers from three different regiments. In his
official report of the disaster. Colonel Johnson declared that,
following the capitulation, one Negro soldier was shot and killed
when he refused to help tear up some railroad tracks, while five
others, “who, having been sick, were unable to keep up with the
rest on the march" were likewise murdered. 86

Finally, there are occasional notices of the killing after cap-
ture of individual Negro soldiers. Evidence of at least two such

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98

cases exist, one occurring in Missouri in May, 1863, the other
in North Carolina in December, 1863. 87

The announced policy of the Confederate government of re-
fusing to treat captured Negro soldiers as prisoners of war, and
its implementation of that policy in practice, provoked a des-
peration among these troops that seems to have increased their
battle casualties. As General Ullman remarked of his Negro
troops:

They are far more in earnest than we. I have talked with hundreds
of them. They understand their position full as well as we do. They
know the deep stake they have in the issue — that, if we are unsuccess-
ful, they will be remanded to worse a slavery than before. They also
have a settled conviction that if they are taken, they will be tortured
and hung. These impressions will make them daring and desperate
fighters . 88

An example of the effect of this upon Negro troops may be
offered from the pen of a Confederate officer who had occasion
to regret it. Brigadier-General L. S. Ross cut off and surrounded
the Federal garrison at Yazoo City, Mississippi in March, 1864,
and, on the fifth, demanded its surrender. “We squabbled about
the terms of the capitulation/' reported the General, “as I
would not recognize negroes as soldiers, or guarantee them nor
their officers protection as such." As a result, he went on, the
Negroes “returned and pressed our forces so hard that we were
compelled to withdraw . . . and they refused to surrender." 89

Having attempted to account for the excessive mortality suf-
fered by United States Colored Troops during the Civil War,
we turn now to a consideration of casualties suffered by the
Negro in other services.

The first item which immediately appears and which, though
hitherto neglected, considerably alters the total casualty picture,
is the fact that there were four combat regiments of Negroes that
never were federalized, and therefore never formed part of the
United States Colored Troops. The casualty figures of these units
hitherto have been credited to those suffered by the states which
raised them, and ultimately have come to make up part of the
totals for United States Volunteer Troops, as distinguished from
the Colored Troops.

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 99

These four regiments were the 29th Regiment of Connecticut
Volunteer Infantry, the 5th Regiment of Massachusetts Cavalry,
the 54th and 55th Regiments of Massachusetts Volunteer In-
fantry. The data on mortality suffered by those regiments may
be observed in this table: 00

Regiment Killed & Mortally Died from Disease Total

Wounded

Officers Enlisted Men

Officers

E.M.

29th Conn.

1

44

1

152

198

5th Cavalry

7

116

123

54th Mass.

5

104

1

160

270

55th Mass.

3

64

2

128

197

Totals

T

219

T

556

788

This total of 778 is to be added to the official figure for deaths
among Negro army units which thus should read 37,635 and not
36,847.

In addition there were some scattered Negro units which served
for short periods of time and probably suffered some deaths, but
are not included among the approximately 186,000 Negroes in
the infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments forming the body
known as United States Colored Troops. Thus, there may be
mentioned the formation, in July, 1864, as the result of the
governor's appeal, of a company of Negro infantry, for a hundred
days' service, in Philadelphia 91 ; while the Provost Marshal of
Alexandria, Virginia, was authorized, in October, 1864, to
organize at that place, “a second independent company of
colored infantry." 92

Again, Major-General Hurlbut, commanding the Department
of the Gulf, in a general order dated October 27, 1864, authorized
the formation of two regiments of Negro infantry to be raised
in the city of New Orleans (with no discrimination as to officers),
but it appears that only one company of about eighty men, with
Negro officers, was actually raised. 93 Later this year, probably
in November, Major-General S. R. Curtis formed, with War
Department approval, a light artillery battery of Negro men,
with Negro officers, but this seems to have been unsuccessful,
did not enter combat, and was mustered out in July, 1865. 94

Of greater importance is the fact that under two different

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sets of circumstances Negroes were regularly enlisted and mus-
tered members of many of the so-called white regiments. On the
one hand this was due to the ever-present phenomenon of
“passing,” and while no estimate of the numbers that may have
been involved by the practice is possible, the evidence of its
existence is conclusive.

In 1863, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts wrote that “in
more than one instance, I have known ‘persons of African de-
scent' serving as volunteers in white regiments, during the pres-
ent war. Only a few days since, such a person was, at his own
request, transferred from his regiment belonging to a State
other than Massachusetts to our 55th Regiment . . John
Eaton, Jr. declared, before the American Freedmen's Inquiry
Commission in May, 1864, that “already some old regiments of
white soldiers have recruited members all their lives slaves, and
not to be distinguished by any African characteristic. . . . ” 9 «
The Negro author, Joseph T. Wilson, himself enlisted in a
New York regiment, though he remained but three days. He
cites, however, other instances where the Negro remained with
a white unit 97

In August, 1862, several members of the 1st Kansas Volun-
teer Infantry requested the transfer of a Negro. This was ap-
proved by the Colonel, George W. Deitzler, who, with extraordi-
nary delicacy, wrote: “He is full two thirds ‘nigger/ too black
to serve upon terms of equality with white soldiers. I respectfully
recommend that he be mustered out of service, or transferred to
Jim Lane’s nigger brigade. The recommendation is not made
out of disrespect for the nigger.'' 98 As a final example may be
cited the fact that a fugitive slave enlisted in the 14th Maine
Regiment of Infantry while it was stationed in New Orleans,
in June, 1862, but recognition from his master brought dis-
missal. 99

But the majority of Negroes who served as soldiers in the so-
called white” regiments were enlisted and mustered in as Ne-
groes, and served as wagoners, teamsters, and, above all, as
under-cooks. These men were considered and referred to as
soldiers, appear on the rolls of numerous “white” regiments,
and, when they died or were wounded or killed, the “white”
casualty lists grew. 100

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR lOl

On August 8, 1862, General Sherman, commanding the 5th
Division, Army of the Tennessee, ordered that his regimental
commanders might employ not over sixty-five Negroes per regi-
ment as company cooks and teamsters, and that men so used
were to “be borne on the muster-rolls,” but that they were
neither to be armed nor uniformed. 101 Five months later Gen-
eral Rosecrans, commanding the Department of the Cumber-
land, announced that Negroes might be employed as company
cooks (2 per company), as well as laborers and nurses, by the
quartermaster, engineers, and medical departments. 102 Yet, this
order, too, did not actually make soldiers of the Negroes thus
employed.

Shortly thereafter, however, Congress passed an act, one sec-
tion of which declared that for each thirty men in a company,
one cook was to be provided, while there were to be two cooks
for each company of over thirty men. These cooks were to be
detailed, in rotation, from the privates, each man serving ten
days. In addition, the President was authorized “to cause to be
enlisted [my emphasis— H. A.] . . . two under-cooks of African
descent, who shall receive for their full compensation ten dollars
per month, and one ration per day— three dollars of said monthly
pay may be in clothing,” 103 i.e., precisely the compensation al-
lowed Negro soldiers in their own regiments.

Orders were issued by local commanders implementing the
above act, and occasionally widening it to include Negroes
serving in capacities other than that of cook. Thus, General
Rosecrans ordered that, “Every cook or teamster shall be prop-
erly enrolled and mustered into service, according to law, with-
out delay,” 104 while General Grant, in addition to ordering or
permitting the hiring of Negroes for various services, authorized,
in his Department of the Tennessee, the use within each of his
regiments and companies of one Negro cook per fifteen men,
and one Negro teamster for every wagon. 105

The matter was clarified and standardized (at least in theory)
by War Department General Order No. 323, issued on September
28, 1863. This order referred to the section of the last quoted
Public Act and declared:

For a regular [army] company, the two under-cooks will be enlisted;
for a volunteer company they will be mustered into service, as in the

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case of other soldiers. In each case a remark will be made on their en-
listment papers showing that they are under-cooks of African descent.
Their names will be borne on the company muster rolls at the foot of
the list of privates. They will be paid, and their accounts will be kept,
like other enlisted men. [The manner of payment was to be identical,
not the sum disbursed.] They will also be charged in the same manner
as other soldiers . 106

Actually, records show that Negro under-cooks were enlisted
in regiments prior to this War Department order. For example,
in the 1st Kansas Volunteer Infantry there were a total of
eighteen Negro soldiers. Of these one was enlisted in 1861, four
in 1862, and a total of eleven prior to September, 1863. 107 On
the other hand it appears that even after the War Department
order, enlistments were not made out for some under-cooks.
Thus, among the service records of one Private James Woods,
of Company F, 121st Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry, is
an affidavit dated October 31, 1863, by Lieutenant Benjamin A.
Banker, declaring that though Woods had been “employed as
an under cook . . . from the first day of August 1863/' yet “no
enlistment papers were made at the time of his employment as
said under-cook or since.” 108

The clear intent of the War Department that these Negro
men were to be considered as soldiers and treated as such
(though paid less, 109 and permanently detailed as cooks) was
realized. The enlistment papers, muster-in and muster-out docu-
ments, and other service records of these men (all filed, alpha-
betically, with their own regiments, precisely as other soldiers)
demonstrate without any question that they were bona fide
soldiers in very many regiments hitherto considered white. 110

Some interesting points develop concerning these particular
Negro soldiers. First, it may be remarked that many of their
enlistment papers, notwithstanding the clear directive of the
War Department, do not show them to have been “under-cooks
of African descent, but, on the contrary, except for the descrip
tion of hair and complexion, these papers are identical with
that of other soldiers. On the service records themselves, under
rank, one finds for these men such entries as “private,” “under-
cook, cook,” “colored.” On the muster-out forms there is evi-
dence, as shown in the “last-paid” column, that there was much

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR log

irregularity in their payment, and occasionally one will find
the remark, “never paid.” It appears, too, that, in accordance
with the general practice for Negro soldiers until 1864, these
men were paid no bounty. Entries charging for clothing ad-
vanced, and in a few cases itemizing particular pieces of equip
ment lost or damaged, seem to show that these men were out-
fitted very much like other members of their regiments. 111

A curious episode will show the difficulty that contemporaries
had at times in dealing with these Negro soldiers of “white”
regiments. This involves one Charles Danna, an eighteen year-old
under cook of Company B, 17th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer
Infantry. Danna’s service record shows him to have been en-
rolled and mustered on January 10, 1865, at Savannah, Georgia,
for three years, but in April he became ill while with his unit
in North Carolina, and on May 19, 1865, he died at the Foster
General Hospital in New Bern. On the casualty sheet Charles
Danna is listed as Private Charles Daniels, and no mention of
his color appears. But on the inventory of effects submitted by
the surgeon in charge of the hospital, he is listed as Private
Charles Daniels of the 17th Regiment of Ohio Colored Volun-
teers. In due time this paper was ready for filing in the Adjutant
General's office where, of course, it was discovered that no such
regiment existed. In a letter of November 7, 1865, that office
informed the surgeon “that no such organization is known . . .
as the 17th Ohio Colored,” and requested that he ascertain the
correct designation “if possible.” 112

With records as they are today it would appear to be im-
possible to discover how many Negro soldiers were actually en-
listed in “white” regiments. But that this was no inconsiderable
number will appear when it is stated that a careful examination
of the entire personnel roster of all Illinois regiments discloses,
after elimination of duplication, that a minimum of six hun-
dred and six Negroes were regularly enlisted members of those
regiments. 118

In terms of casualty figures for these particular soldiers, one
is able to do little more than point out that they were subjected
to all the hardships and dangers faced by their units. In many
cases, it appears that the records of the Negroes, when kept at
all, were handled with great carelessness. As an example may be

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IO4

mentioned the fact that out of the 606 Negroes in Illinois regi-
ments, 57 are totally unaccounted for, with no note of even final
disposition being available. However, of the remaining 549
Negroes for whom some remark is carried, there were three dis-
charged for disability incurred in service, one missing in action,
two wounded, but not mortally, three captured, seven killed in
action or mortally wounded, and 26 who died of disease, making
a total casualty figure of 60, or about 1 1 per cent. 114

That the official records, as published by the adjutant generals
of the states, are not correct as concerns casualties among these
Negro soldiers, is demonstrable. As a check, the writer examined
the service records of each of the thirteen under-cooks of the
69th Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Among the papers
of one of these, James Woods, appears a casualty sheet, showing
that he was wounded on August 14, 1864, during the Georgia
campaign, but the entry for James Woods in the printed official
record does not show this. 115

The fact of the employment by the United States during the
Civil War of Negroes not enlisted as soldiers is well known, but
there exists no satisfactory study of the subject It is estimated
that at least as many Negroes were hired by the government as
were formally enrolled in its army’s ranks; that is to say, some-
thing like 200,000 or 250,000 men and women. 116 Under the
direct supervision of government agencies, they helped bring
the Civil War to a successful end. 117

A few miscellaneous data and some conclusions as to casualties
among this category of Negroes may be offered. Many non-
enlisted Negroes were used in military roles that brought them
into proximity with the actual battleground and certainly into
day-to-day relationships with soldiers.

One such type of employment that probably comprised several
thousand Negroes was that of servant, or orderly, for officers.
The evidence demonstrates that Negroes served in this capacity
from 1861 to the close of the war, 118 and there is some indication
that even government officials felt that the distinction between
these Negroes and those acknowledged as soldiers was more for-
mal than real. 119

That these servants were involved in all the trials of war is
clear. Thus, four Negro orderlies were among the 403 Federal

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 105

prisoners of war delivered to Fort Monroe on February 20, 1862,
by Confederate exchange officers. 120 Three days later, 372 Fed-
eral prisoners of war arrived, in exchange, at the same place,
and among them were ten Negroes, probably officers’ servants. 121

Among the men of the 42nd Regiment of Massachusetts Vol-
unteer Infantry aboard the Harriet Lane when it was captured
at Galveston, Texas, in January, 1863, were two Negroes, both
shown as “not enlisted” and both servants of the commanding
Colonel. 122 And that some of these Negro servants suffered from
more than capture is apparent from the circumstances affecting
one of them, named Robert F. Small. He had been an officer’s
servant, had participated in several major battles and had lost,
finally, both legs, due to over-exposure. Since he was not en-
listed, he was entitled to no assistance from the government
which led to a public appeal for funds. 123

The use of Negroes by the Union Army as spies, scouts, and
guides has been touched on in secondary accounts, but no thor-
ough study has as yet been published. The activities of so well-
known a Negro as Harriet Tubman have been described, 124 but
they were by no means unique. Sources show that the use of
Negroes in these roles was very common, and of inestimable
value.

In the early weeks of the war an officer in command of an
expedition in Maryland wrote: “The following reports of the
force and position of the enemy opposite my positions are from
negro scouts, and from appearances are nearly accurate.” 125
Brigadier-General Schuyler Hamilton referred, in March, 1862,
to a fugitive slave named Wallace Selvic who had recently joined
his organization in Missouri and who had “with great courage
and gallantry guided me in making an important reconnais-
sance.” 120 On April 6, 1862, General Doubleday’s headquarters.
Military Defences North of the Potomac, ordered that fugitive
slaves were not to be surrendered but rather their entry was
to be encouraged because “they bring much valuable informa-
tion, which cannot be obtained from any other source . . . make
excellent guides . . . [and] frequently have exposed the haunts of
secession spies and traitors, and the existence of rebel organiza-
tions.” 127 Early in 1864 a free Negro, Tom Heath, of Goochland,
Virginia, was arrested by Confederate forces for having “acted

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as a guide to the enemy/' but the district attorney felt there was
not sufficient evidence to convict Heath for treason. He noted,
however, the recent suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and
recommended that the Secretary of War order Heath's incarcera-
tion without trial. He did this because, "The crime with which
he is charged is one of such frequent occurrence that an example
should be made of Heath. It is a matter of notoriety in the sec-
tions of the Confederacy where raids are frequent that the guides
of the enemy are nearly always free negroes and slaves." 128

The best single contemporary description of this type of work
yet seen is contained in the wTitings of a Union official in North
Carolina early in 1862, and this source demonstrates that casual-
ties were not disassociated from it. From this one learns:

Upwards of fifty volunteers of the best and most courageous [of the
Negro refugees], were kept constantly employed on the perilous but
important duty of spies, scouts, and guides. In this work they were
invaluable and almost indispensable. They frequently went from
thirty to three hundred miles within the enemy’s lines; visiting his
principal camps and most important posts, and bringing us back im-
portant and reliable information . . . often on these errands barely

escaping with their lives. Two or three of them were taken prisoners;

one of these was known to have been shot, and the fate of the others
was not ascertained. The pay they received for this work was small
but satisfactory. . . . They considered the work as a religious duty. 129

The main body of non-enlisted Negroes who served the Union
forces worked for army units, or for the Quartermaster, Commis-
sary, Medical, and Engineer services in such occupations as pio-
neers, laborers, hostlers, teamsters, wagoners, carpenters, masons,
laundresses, hospital attendants, fortification, highway and rail-
road builders, longshoremen, and blacksmiths.

As so-called pioneers, Negroes were actually doing the work of
engineer soldiers. Thus, in the summer of 1862, in the heavy
and dangerous work of felling trees, preparing gun positions and
improving roads below Vicksburg, approximately twelve hun-
dred Negroes were employed. 130 The defenses of the city of
Corinth, Mississippi, built in preparation for the battle of
October, 1862, was the result of the work of Negroes "organized
into squads of twenty-five each" and commanded by Army per-
sonnel. 131

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 107

The officers who had been the chief engineers of the Army
of the Tennessee during its successful siege of Vicksburg officially
reported:

The labor in the trenches was done by men of the pioneer companies
of divisions, by details from the lines, or by negroes. Several of the
pioneer companies had negroes attached to them, who had come into
our camps. These negroes were paid $10 per month in accordance with
law and proved to be very efficient laborers when under good super-
vision. The labor performed by details from the line, as is usual in
such cases, was very light in comparison with that done by the same
number of pioneers or negroes. 132

That this work entailed blood as well as sweat is clear from
the following report: In the evening of July 1, 1863, the enemy
exploded a huge mine, which resulted in the death of several of
the besieging soldiers and "Eight negroes and the overseer in
charge, working a counter-mine, were also killed." 133

General Sherman seems to have particularly favored the use
of Negro pioneers. Indeed, he reported to the Adjutant General,
"I have used them [Negroes] with great success as pioneer com-
panies attached to Divisions, and I think it would be well if a
law would sanction such an organization one hundred to each
Division of four thousand men. . . ." 134 A few months later,
Sherman, in a Special Field Order, told his commanders that,
“The organization, at once, of a good pioneer battalion for each
Army Corps, composed, if possible, of negroes, should be at-
tended to. . . ." 135

In other types of service, too, proximity to the battleground
was usual, and casualties from enemy action and from disease
must have been numerous.

Some items will be cited to show the close relationship existing
between the regularly enlisted soldiers and the hired Negro
workers. Thus, late in 1863, Brigadier-General T. J. Boyle sug-
gested, from Louisville, Kentucky, that it would be well to
actually enlist two or three thousand colored teamsters, as that
would be an administrative aid. The idea had the approval of
the Secretary of War who instructed his Quartermaster General
to draw up organizational plans for such enlisted men. The lat-
ter officer then suggested that they be organized into companies
of one hundred men each, and be drilled, uniformed and armed.

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108

It appears that this plan fell through, largely because of the
opposition of the Governor of Kentucky, but in spite of this
General Boyle reported on November 30, that he had ordered
the Negroes “in the meantime to be employed as teamsters
which was done." 186

That Negroes generally served as teamsters directly attached
(though not enlisted) to individual units is clear. Provision for
this was made in January, 1863, by the Department of the Cum-
berland, and in August by the Department of the Tennessee.
The Department of the Gulf ordered, in June, 1863, that, "Here-
after, negroes will be exclusively employed as teamsters in all
Companies, Batteries, Regiments, and Brigades, in place of en-
listed men or citizens. 0137

Some idea of the magnitude of the numbers of Negroes in-
volved in this type of direct attachment to army units in the field
may be obtained from the replies sent to the Quartermaster
General's request for this information. General Meigs tele-
graphed top field commanders on August 4, 1863, asking for
estimates of the number of Negroes employed by them in direct
service with their armies. Some of the replies are available and
revealing.

The Chief Quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac reported
that subordinates, on a quick check, had given him figures which
showed a total, as of August 15, 1863, of 4,203 Negroes employed
with units of that army, but he added that he believed this figure
to be a serious underestimate. 138 A telegram from the Army of
the Cumberland stated 'no reliable estimate" was available, but
the sender expressed the belief that "not far from 6,000" Negroes
were employed by it at the moment. 138 The officer in charge of
the quartermaster depot at Memphis estimated that in his city
there are employed by the different staff departments . . . eight
hundred negroes." 140 The analogous officer for the depot in
Washington submitted a very elaborate table from which one
learns that he believed there were 4,688 Negroes employed in the
Quartermaster and Commissary departments in the cities of
Washington, and Alexandria, Virginia. 141 Thus, it appears that,
using only minimum figures, about 16,000 Negroes were directly
attached to army units in the few areas from which replies are
still extant.

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR log

Deaths from disease and accident among these thousands of
Negroes, and particularly in the contraband camps, set aside for
and usually built by themselves, which dotted the nation during
the war years, must have been very numerous. A few scattered
pieces of evidence concerning this are available, but from them
it is impossible to even estimate, with any degree of confidence,
the actual number of fatalities involved here.

Eye-witnesses condemned, in severest terms, conditions pre-
vailing in the contraband camps at New Orleans, Carrollton,
Donaldsonville, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They declared
the Negro inhabitants of these areas were "herded together,"
existing under "every possible condition of misery," and "dying
in large numbers." 142 A more precise, though equally incomplete,
source of information, is the reports of interments performed
under the supervision of the Quartermaster Department. Of
these reports, the General commanding this department wrote:
"These are the records of those who die in hospitals, camps, and
barracks [i.e., not in the field] for whose burial there is time to
make decent and orderly provision under the general orders
and regulations." 143 That these figures are, then, incomplete
accounts of actual deaths is certain. When it is added that offi-
cers in but four of seventeen states reporting included data for
contrabands interred, it is obvious that the figures represent but
a fraction of their total mortalities. From this source, however,
it is evident that as of 1865 Quartermaster officers in Missouri,
Illinois, Virginia, and Tennessee reported the interment by this
department of a total of 4,125 contrabands. 144

There is excellent evidence of the occasional employment of
these non-enlisted Negroes in actual combat with the foe. In
the Department of the South it appears to have been customary
to arm numbers of the contrabands, particularly on the islands
dotting the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, so that they
might protect themselves from Confederate raids and incursions.

A point generally overlooked is the fact that War Department
authorization of the arming of Negroes was given first in October,
1861, and not in the altered militia law of July, 1862. Thomas
A. Scott, the acting Secretary of War, directed the then Briga-
dier-General Sherman, commanding the expedition to the
Southern coast, on October 14, 1861, to avail himself "of the

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services of any persons, whether fugitives from labor or not, who
may offer them to the National Government/* These individuals
were to be employed "in such services as they may be fitted for;
either as ordinary employees, or, if special circumstances seem
to require it, in any other capacity, with such organization, in
squads, companies or otherwise, as you may deem most beneficial
to the service; this however not being a general arming of them
for military services/* 145

Evidence concerning Sherman's action has not been found,
but it is this order which his successor, General David Hunter,
cited to justify his large-scale arming of Negroes and his use of
them in expeditions against the enemy. While this action was
disavowed by the government, many of the men so trained, in
the spring of 1862, formed the nucleus for regularly authorized
infantry units that summer. The fact remains that in this depart-
ment Negro guards and pickets were maintained at and around
contraband centers, and that, though not enlisted, they did, at
times, battle with the enemy and suffer casualties.

It is to action of this sort that Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton
had reference, in his letter of August 16, 1862, in which he re-
marked that the island of St. Simon, off the coast of Georgia,
“has been guarded for a long time by negro pickets,** and that
recently rebels had landed there. “They were vigorously attacked
by the negro pickets,** continued the General, “and during the
action which ensued 2 of the latter were killed and 1 wounded.
The rebels fled . . . what their loss was is not known. I think
some of them must have been killed.*’ 146 A similar event was
reported by the same officer as having occurred in October,
1862, at St. Helena Island, South Carolina, when the Confeder-
ates “were fired on and driven off by the negro pickets.** 147

The report of Captain James B. Talbot, superintendent of
contrabands at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, of the role played by the
Negroes in the repulse of the Confederate attack upon that place
on October 25, 1863, is interesting and pertinent:

When the skirmishing first commenced I received orders from you
[Colonel Powell Clayton, commanding the Post] to furnish as many
men as possible to roll out cotton-bales and form breastworks. I had
300 immediately brought from the camp, on double-quick, and from
the short space of time in which every street opening was blockaded

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR 1 1 1

you may judge of their efficiency in that respect, especially when you
consider that much of the work was accomplished under a heavy fire
from the enemy's skirmishers.

By the time the breastworks were complete the fight had become
general, and calls for water were urgent to supply the soldiers and
quench the fire that had caught to the cotton-bales from our artillery.
I immediately pressed every water-holding vessel within reach, and
formed a chain of negroes with buckets from the top of the bank to the
water’s edge. At this time a galling fire that opened on them from the
enemy killed 1, wounded 3, and for a moment threw them all into
confusion; but they were soon rallied, and resumed their work with
the most astonishing rapidity. About this time the danger was imminent
of the enemy making a charge down the river under cover of the bank.
Agreeably to your order, a breastwork was immediately formed under
the bank, and while engaged in this work, another was wounded. Fifteen
of them had arms, and were ordered to hold the point along the river;
which they did throughout the action, some of them firing as many as
30 rounds, and one actually ventured out and captured a prisoner.
None of them had ever before seen a battle, and the facility with
which they labored and the manly efforts put forth to aid in holding
the place excelled my highest expectations, and deserves the applause
of their country and the gratitude of the soldiers. Their total loss is
five killed and twelve wounded. 148

When New Bern, North Carolina, was attacked, in February,
1864, its successful defense was assisted by nine hundred Negro
men hurried into the trenches from a nearby contraband camp. 149
Similarly, in the attack on Frankfort, Kentucky, in June, 1864,
some three hundred Negroes entered the fray with fists and
knives and did good service, but their losses, which under the
circumstances might well have been considerable, went unre-
ported. 150

There were at least two other factors producing casualties
among the Negro people during the Civil War. One of these
was the resistance to their masters by slaves within the borders
of the Confederacy. Here the story of these activities may be
summarized by pointing out that Negroes who refused to be
evacuated from areas close to Federal lines were sometimes
killed, others who attempted to flee to the Union forces died
in the attempt, still others who waged a guerrilla warfare as
members of maroon bands (at times in alliance with anti-Con-

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federate whites) lost their lives, while deaths due to the suppres-
sion of slave uprisings or plots regularly recurred in the South
during the war years. 161

Lastly, there were casualties among the Negroes serving Con-
federate forces. In the vast majority of cases this service was
distinctly involuntary, or the result of the status of the Negro
within society. This, however, would certainly not decrease the
casualties, and knowing that tens of thousands of Negroes
worked for and with the Confederate Army and Navy, there
can be no question but that many among them died.

In addition, free Negroes were enlisted as soldiers, or at least
subject to such enlistment, in Tennessee, Alabama, and Louisi-
ana from the early part of the war. 162 Note, too, should be
taken of the fact that the Confederate Congress passed an act,
on April 15, 1862, empowering payment to Negro members of
army bands, and six days later authorized the use of four cooks,
per company, who might be either slave or free, Negro or white.
For these men a monthly wage ranging from $15 to $20 was
provided, and they were to receive the same allowances, food,
and clothing as soldiers. 163 The regular enlistment of Negroes
as soldiers by the Confederacy, as its dying gasp just prior to
capitulation, is well known, though it may be added that the
story of how early demands for this arose, and how widespread
they were, has not yet been told. 154

No accurate figure on the number of Negroes associated in
one capacity or another with the Confederate forces appears to
be available, and even intelligent guesses as to casualties from
battle or disease and accident are impossible. It may be men-
tioned, however, that authentic contemporary accounts of battle
casualties suffered by Negroes in the Confederate service are
exceedingly rare. 155

The stereotyped view of the Negro as a passive onlooker dur-
ing the American Civil War will not bear the light of historical
investigation. Certain it is that when one writes, as did W. E.
Woodward, that the Negro people “became free without any
efforts of their own,” he is exposing not that people’s history, but
rather his own ignorance. During the Civil War the American
Negro contributed greatly, both on land and sea, in struggles
for his emancipation.

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY

So far as this writer has been able to ascertain, no study of
the role of the Negro in the United States Navy during the Civil
War exists. Occasionally, available literature will yield a line
or two indicating some awareness of the fact that Negroes served
in the Union Navy, but that is all. 1

This void is explicable not only on the basis of the general
and notorious neglect of the Negro that has marked the great
body of American historiography until the past generation, but
also on the basis of some quite practical considerations. The
primary source for a study of any phase of the history of the
Union fleet, namely the Official Records of the Union and Con-
federate Navies, 2 must be read page by page by anyone interested
in the Negro, for that subject is not indexed within the indi-
vidual thirty volumes.

And Massachusetts, which provided the greatest number of
men for the Union fleet, has published, in one and a half vol-
umes, the names of each of her Civil War sailors, but has not
distinguished Negro from white. 3 Finally, while Congress, on
February 25, 1903, authorized the publication of the complete
roster of members of the Union and Confederate Armies, it did
not authorize such a roster for the Navies. 4

Still an awareness of the importance that maritime pursuits
have always had in the life of the American Negro people might
well lead one to expect that the story of his participation on the
ships of the republic in the suppression of the slaveholders’ up-
rising would be of sufficient interest and importance to repay
overcoming these obstacles.

It is pertinent, at this point, to present, very briefly, some of
the evidence establishing the close relationship that has existed,
from earliest days, between the sea and the Negro.

In the seventeenth century Negroes, free and slave, were widely

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114

employed on privateers, trading vessels, and fishing boats, 5 while
some of the most distinguished figures in Negro history during
the following two centuries earned their livelihoods, at some
point in their careers, by a maritime occupation. 6 Negroes were
not uncommon in the Continental and state navies during the
Revolution, 7 and they played a conspicuous part in the naval
fighting of the War of 1812.® During that war and for several
years thereafter, according to the testimony of a distinguished
contemporary, Negroes formed from ten to twenty per cent of
the crews, and Jim Crowism appears to have been notable by its
absence. Thus, we learn that “The white and colored seamen
messed together. . . . There seemed to be an entire absence of
prejudice against the blacks as messmates among the crew/’ 9

Available evidence makes it clear that in such cities as New
York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and in such states as
Connecticut, Virginia, and North Carolina, marine pursuits
formed one of the most important types of employment for the
Negro throughout the pre-Civil War period. 10 Indicative, too,
is the fierce opposition displayed by northern states, and many
southern merchants as well, to the enactment, following periods
of acute slave unrest, of special police and tax regulations for
ships carrying Negroes as crew members. 11

Two opinions of attorneys general of the United States are
relevant in presenting the seafaring background of the American
Negro. In 1821 the collector of customs at Norfolk, Virginia,
was faced with the problem of deciding whether or not a free
Negro was qualified to command an American merchant vessel
in view of the fact that the citizenship of a Negro was question-
able. He requested a decision from his chief, the Secretary of
the Treasury, who, in turn, asked for an opinion from William
Wirt, the Attorney General. The latter decided that, “Upon
the whole, I am of the opinion that free persons of color in
Virginia are not citizens of the United States, within the intent
and meaning of the acts regulating foreign and coasting trade, so
as to be qualified to command vessels." 12

An almost identical case reached the same office over forty
years later, but changed times evoked a different opinion. Salmon
P. Chase informed Lincoln’s Attorney General, Edward Bates,
that

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY

J1 5

the schooner Elizabeth and Margaret, of New Brunswick, is detained
by the revenue cutter Tiger, at South Amboy, New Jersey, because
commanded by a “colored man,” and so by a person not a citizen of
the United States. As colored masters are numerous in our coasting trade
[my emphasis — H. A.] I submit, for your opinion, ... are colored men
citizens of the United States, and therefore competent, according to
the acts of Congress to command American vessels?

In this instance the Attorney General was of the opinion that
free Negroes born in the United States are citizens thereof and
“are competent, according to the Acts of Congress, to be masters
of vessels engaged in the coasting trade." 13

Additional data are available providing information on the
Negro in the American Navy during the years from the termina-
tion of the War of 1812 to the commencement of the Civil War.
First, the United States specifically provided for the enlistment
of free Negroes in the Navy by an Act of March 3, 1813. The
relevant paragraph of this act reads as follows:

That from and after the termination of the war in which the United
States are now engaged with Great Britain, it shall not be lawful to
employ on board any of the public or private vessels of the United
States any person or persons except citizens of the United States, or
persons of colour, natives of the United States . 14

That Negroes took advantage of this enactment is apparent
from the following letter written in 1839 by Acting Secretary of
the Navy, Isaac Chauncey, to the Commander of the Boston
Naval Office, John Downs:

Frequent complaint having been made of the number of Blacks and
other colored persons entered at some of the recruiting stations, and
the consequent undue proportion of such persons transferred to sea-
going vessels it is deemed proper to call your attention to the subject
and to request that you will direct the recruiting officer at the station
under your command, in future, not to enter a greater proportion of
free colored persons than five per cent of the whole number of white
persons entered by him weekly or monthly, and in no instance and
under no circumstances to enter a slave . 15

The 5 per cent ratio appears to have been adhered to generally
thereafter. Thus, when, in 1842, Congress, troubled by strained
relations with Great Britain, asked the Secretary of the Navy

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1 16

for a report on the number of Negroes— free and slave-enlistea
in the service, he replied that no slaves were enlisted in the Navy,
and that since Negroes were not entered separately in the rec-
ords, precise figures could not be given. He went on to say,
however, that a naval regulation forbade over one-twentieth
part of the crew of any ship to be Negro, and that, “It is be-
lieved that the number is generally very far within this pro-
portion/* 16

In addition to the fact that Negroes traditionally had followed
the sea, and that they had been, for generations, members of the
navy, there were other forces that led many to join those already
in this service during the Civil War.

In the first place, Negroes were not allowed to enlist in the
Union Army until the latter part of 1862, 17 so that the only way
free Negroes could get into the fight against the slaveholder was
to join the navy. Secondly, fugitive slaves vere enlisted by the
navy many months before the army allowed any Negroes to
join.

This latter action was forced by the fugitives themselves who,
from the very start of hostilities, flocked in large numbers to
the Federal vessels. Thus, Commander Glisson, of the Mount
Vernon, patrolling Virginia waters, informed his superior, in
July 1861, that contrabands were arriving daily, were refusing to
leave, bore valuable information and were capable of performing
useful work. He had provided them with rations on his own
responsibility but his supplies would soon be exhausted. What
was he to do?

Flag-Officer Stringham, commanding the Atlantic Blockade
Squadron, sent these reports to Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy, adding his opinion that, “If negroes are to be used in this
contest, I have no hesitation in saying they should be used to
preserve the Government, and not to destroy it." He closed by
putting the specific question: “These men are destitute; shall I
ration them?” and by suggesting, “They may be serviceable on
board our storeships.” 18

The Naval Secretary replied that while it was not the

policy of the Government to invite or encourage this class of deser-
tions . . . yet under the circumstances, no other cause than that pursued

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY

H7

by Commander Glisson could be adopted without violating every
principle of humanity. To return them would be impolitic as well
as cruel, and as you remark, “they may be made serviceable on board
our storeships,” you will do well to employ them. 10

The flood tide continued and grew, however, and the ex-
pedient mentioned by Welles was not enough. In August came
report after report of this:

... a small open boat [with five Negroes in it] came alongside mine
demanding food and protection . . . discovered an open boat contain-
ing four negroes, with a white flag flying on the staff, and pulling for
the ship. I took them on board; found them intelligent; they gave
me useful information; and one of them informed me he had been
as pilot to the steam tug. ... We now have sixteen negroes on board
this vessel; who are consuming our provisions and water faster than
I think is desirable . . . four fine-looking negroes, contraband of war,
have just arrived. . . . 20

So it came about that on September 20, 1861, the Secretary of
the Navy declared:

The Department finds it necessary to adopt a regulation with respect
to the large and increasing number of persons of color, commonly
known as contraband, now subsisted at the navy yard and on board
ships of war.

These can neither be expelled from the service to which they have
resorted, nor can they be maintained unemployed, and it is not proper
that they should be compelled to render necessary and regular services
without a stated compensation. You are therefore authorized, when
their services can be made useful, to enlist them for the naval service,
under the same forms and regulations as apply to other enlistments.
They will be allowed, however, no higher rating than “boys,” at a
compensation of $10 per month and one ration a day. 21

That these conditions would seem attractive to the Negro as
compared to the offers of the army will appear when note is
taken of the actions in this regard, and at about this period, by
the headquarters of the Department of Virginia. That Depart-
ment, in October, 1861, ordered that all contrabands employed
as servants by officers or others were to receive their subsistence
plus $8 per month ($4 for women), and that all other Negroes
“under the protection of the troops,” not employed as servants,

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ll8

were to “be immediately put to work, in either the engineer's
or quartermaster's departments." No wage scale was established
for the latter for two weeks, after which it was announced that
boys (from 12-18 years) and infirm men were to receive $5 per
month, and able-bodied men $10 plus rations. The former, how-
ever, were to receive for themselves, in actual cash, one dollar a
month, the latter two dollars, while the remainder was to revert
—if the laborers maintained “good behavior"— to the quartermas-
ter s department to pay for clothing and to help support women,
children and the disabled. 22

It is no wonder, then, as an official army investigating com-
mission reported in March, 1862, that:

A considerable number [of Negroes] have taken service in the
navy. . . . Service in the navy is decidedly popular with them. The
navy’ rates them as boys; they get $10 a month, and are entitled to all
the privileges of ships* crews, and besides, have absolute control of the
earnings of their own labor, which must operate as a powerful incen-
tive to prefer the sea to the land service, when in the latter only $2
per month is the amount they realize. 23

The navy suffered, too, throughout the war from a chronic
and serious shortage of manpower. This was due to several fac-
tors in addition to the enormous expansion of that arm from a
total of seventy-six vessels in March, 1861, to six hundred and
seventy-one vessels in December, 1864. 24

Among the factors were these: enlistment in the navy, unlike
that in the army, carried no bounty payment; the draft made
men subject to army, but not to navy, service; and men serving
in the navy were not credited to their community or state draft
quotas, thus creating a serious attitude against enlistment there-
in. 25 Since Negroes did not receive bounties for army enlistment
(with rare, minor, and local exceptions), and were not subject
to the draft until the latter part of the war, these regulations
adversely affected the readiness of whites to join but not that of
Negroes.

These conditions, by accentuating the manpower shortage,
forced the navy to encourage the enlistment of Negroes, and
probably accounted for, in part, the relatively favorable condi-

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11 9

tions facing the Negro in that service. This in turn exerted influ-
ence in causing Negroes to seek enlistment in that branch.

Indeed, the army at the urgent request of the navy turned
over to the latter a considerable number of Negroes. As early as
the summer of 1862 the Secretary of War ordered Major-General
Dix at Fortress Monroe to “turn over to Flag Officer Goldsbor-
ough such contrabands as he may select for the naval service."
Twice during the month of January, 1863, Welles appealed to
Stanton to let him have up to four thousand physically fit fugi-
tive slaves in the “interests of the public service," and it is certain
that considerable numbers were transferred thereafter from the
army to the navy. 26

In addition, the navy made what may be called enlistment
landings. Thus, for example. Lieutenant G. B. Balch, command-
ing the U.S.S. Pocahontas , reported to Rear-Admiral Du Pont
from Georgetown, South Carolina, on July 24, 1862, that he had
gone ashore with the ship’s surgeon where “we had a gathering
of the contrabands and Dr. Rhoades proceeded to select such as
were fit for the general service, in obedience to your order of
the 21st instant. He has selected some ninety. . . ." 27

Certain it is that many Negroes did enlist in the Union Navy,
and while precise figures are not available it is clear that they
formed a much larger proportion of the navy's personnel than
they did that of the army's. The task of approximating the num-
ber of Negroes serving in the United States Navy during the
Civil War is lightened considerably since it once was tackled by
the Superintendent of Naval War Records. This event, so for-
tunate for the historian, occurred because a Congressman from
Maine, Charles Edgar Littlefield, was moved— for what precise
reason is not known— to write, on March 24, 1902, the following
note to John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy: “I respectfully
request that you furnish me with the number of colored men who
enlisted in the Navy in the war of Rebellion, 1861-1865, and
oblige."

On April 2, 1902, the Secretary replied. He informed Mr.
Littlefield that his request had been referred to the Bureau of
Navigation which reported no information on the subject, but
the Superintendent of the Naval War Records Office penned
the following interesting and informative response:

120

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There are no specific figures found in this office relating to the
number of colored men enlisted in the United States Navy 1861-1865.
The total number of enlistments in the Navy from March 4, 1861, to
May 1, 1865, was 118,044. During the War of 1812 and up to 1860
the proportion of colored men in the ships’ crews varied from one-
fourth to one-sixth and one-eighth of the total crew. During the
Civil War the negro was enlisted in the squadrons for one year. The
regular enlistments at Navy Yards were for three years. In the absence
of specific data it is suggested that as several vessels report during
the Civil War having a crew of one-fourth negroes that the actual
number of enlistments must have been about one-fourth of the total
number given above, or 29,511. 28

As a rough check on the estimate just quoted, the muster rolls
of three arbitrarily selected Civil War vessels were examined.
These were the ship New Hampshire for June 7, 1864, the
steamer Argosy for December 31, 1863, and the ram Avenger for
October 1, 1864. 29 The results are tabulated as follows:

New Hampshire

T otal crew

969

Negroes

242

Argosy

66

35

Avenger

115

19

Total

1150

296

Percentage Negroes

26

It will be observed that this offers a rather remarkable con-
firmation of the superintendent’s estimate.

There is other evidence showing how numerous Negro sailors
were. Thus, for example, the present writer checked the muster
rolls of several vessels in addition to the three already cited
and he has yet to find a vessel having no Negroes among her
crew. 80

On April 30, 1862, Naval Secretary Welles referred to “the
large numbers of persons known as ‘contrabands’ flocking to
the protection of the United States flag.” He felt that this af-
forded “an opportunity to provide in every department of a
ship, especially for boat's crews, acclimated labor." Flag officers
were, therefore, “required to obtain the services of these persons
for the country by enlisting them freely in the Navy, with their

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121

consent,” rating them as “boys," and paying them from eight
to ten dollars per month. 81

Specific references to the frequent enlistment and use of con-
trabands, in addition to those already cited, recur. Thus, Welles
ordered Commodore Charles Wilkes, commanding the James
River Flotilla, in August, 1862, to retain his mortar vessels and
to “fill up the crews with contrabands." 32 Negroes seem to have
been particularly numerous aboard gunboats. Acting Rear Ad-
miral Porter told a Lieutenant Bragg, for example, to fill up
the complements of these vessels with contrabands, and occa-
sionally one comes across reports of a gunboat such as the Glide,
accidentally lost at Cairo in February, 1863, whose crew of
thirty-eight contained thirty contrabands. 38

In October, 1862, Porter informed Welles that four hundred
sick crewmen had grievously accentuated his manpower shortage.
He had "commenced substituting contrabands for firemen and
coal-heavers, reducing the expenses in that way. I have so far
only obtained forty, but have sent down the river to get enough
for all the vessels here, and have ordered all commanders to
use them hereafter in place of white men.’’ 34

Porter's action was adopted as a pattern by the Navy Depart-
ment so that its head ordered Rear-Admiral Dahlgren “to enlist
for service in the [South Atlantic Blockade] squadron as many
able-bodied contrabands as you can, especially for firemen and
coal-heavers." 85 At the same time Porter, himself, in a General
Order, directed that, "Owing to the increasing sickness in the
[Mississippi] squadron, and the scarcity of men" contrabands
were to be used “to a greater extent than heretofore." 36

Somewhat earlier the Navy Department had rescinded the
regulation of April 30, 1862, and provided that contrabands
might be shipped in an original rank as high as landsman (just
above that of first-class boy), and that they might be promoted
to coal-heavers, firemen, ordinary seamen and seamen, that is
to all ranks short of petty officers. 37

An idea of the results of such directives as those from Welles
and Porter may be obtained from these words in a letter written
by the latter to the Adjutant General of the army late in
1863: “All our firemen and coal heaver’s [sic] are negroes,
they soon learn the business, and are rated and receive pay ac-

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cordingly. We have now about 814 contrabands performing the
duty of coal heavers and firemen, and we have altogether (count-
ing officer's [sic] servants, cooks &c) 1049. . . .” 38

Negroes held all ranks in the navy, short of petty officer, while
not a few occupied the technical position of pilot, normally
equivalent, in many respects, to that of a commissioned officer. 89
It is noteworthy, too, that, though some reservations must be
made, there was a relative absence of segregation and discrimina-
tion of Negroes in the Civil War Federal fleet.

The facts concerning positions held by Negro crew members
of eight different vessels may be offered as indicative of condi-
tions in this regard. Aboard these eight ships was a total of 364
Negroes of whom 44 were boys, 279 landsmen, four cooks, five
stewards, 18 coal-heavers, one first-class fireman, one second-class
fireman, five ordinary seamen, and seven seamen— a condition of
affairs in fair accord with the general numerical proportion of
these ratings in the Navy as a whole. 40

In September, 1861, as has already been observed, it was
ordered that while fugitive slaves might be enlisted, they were
not to rank above first-class boys. This was amended in Decem-
ber, 1862, so that contrabands might be shipped in ranks up to
and including landsman, and might then be promoted, aboard
any particular vessel, to the rank of a seaman. Presumably these
regulations governed the general practice, but that there were
deviations and exceptions is demonstrable.

Thus, as early as January, 1862, a naval commander reported
to (then) Flag Officer Du Pont, commanding the South Atlantic
Blockade Squadron, that “I presume there will be no irregularity
in shipping Isaac (as ordinary seaman), a colored refugee, or
contraband, sent from U.S.S. Savannah on board on account of
his knowledge of inlets along the coast; he is somewhat intelli-
gent and a quiet man." 41 Again, the log of the U.S.S. Black Hawk
for May 14, 1864, shows that two Negroes were then added to
its crew, among whom was one “Taylor Cromwell (contraband)
seaman," demonstrating that not all were shipped, i.e., originally
mustered into the crew of a particular vessel— as landsmen or
lower. 42

The use of contrabands as pilots was certainly not covered by
Naval regulations, but it was, quite as certainly, commonly prac-

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123

ticed. In 1863 a Rear-Admiral wrote to the Secretary of the
Navy:

I desire to add that I have also made use of the services of certain
contraband pilots, and have authorized the payment to them sometimes
of $30 and sometimes of $40 per month. May I hope that this course
meets with the approval of the Department? They are skillful and
competent. 43

Note may be taken, too, of the two Negro pilots recorded as
having been killed in action. One of these, unnamed, piloted
the Henry Andrew . He took part in a landing in March, 1862,
at New Smyrna, Florida, which ended disastrously with the am-
bushing and killing of most of the Union force. The Negro,
wounded in the foot, was captured and hanged by the Con-
federate troops. 44 The other Negro pilot who died in action was
William Ayler, of the Coeur de Lion . This occurred on April
17, 1863, while the vessel was engaging a Confederate battery in
the Nansemond River, Virginia. A shell hit the pilot house,
tore away Ayler's left leg, and he died a half hour later. 45

There are several other references to Negro pilots in the
Union fleet, though it is not clear that they were, in every case,
contrabands. Some of these “employed in our gunboats on our
Southern coast and off Nassau," were said, in the course of
“boasting" by a prisoner of the Federals, to have betrayed im-
portant information. 40 A Union naval officer in reporting the
successful accomplishment of a particular mission credited it,
in large part, to information given him by the pilot of the
Paul Jones, “a colored man and familiar with the country." 47
When the Curlew was assigned to survey work on the Tennessee
River she was provided with two pilots, one white, and one “an
old colored pilot." Of the latter Acting Rear Admiral S. P. Lee
remarked: “You will please have [him] paid for his services."
Finally, it may be observed that the Dai Ching, sunk by its own
commander after being hopelessly disabled by artillery fire on
the Combahee River, South Carolina, in January, 1865, was
piloted by a Negro, Stephen Small. 48

Some remarks and evidence concerning the treatment of
Negro members of the Union Navy have already been offered.
It is important, however, that this subject be examined in further
detail. This writer has seen no evidence of any type of dis-

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crimination or segregation having been practiced upon the free
Negro crewmen other than the fact that none appears to have
risen above the rank of seaman, and that from about 1839 on
a definite quota of five per cent for the Negro seems to have been
maintained in recruiting. It appears that Negroes were messed
and quartered in common with other sailors, that Negroes were
frequently of superior rank to fellow crewmen of white com-
plexion, and that even the records of the Navy Department, until
the wholesale enlistment of contrabands, did not distinguish
white from black.

With the enlistment of thousands of fugitive slaves a certain
amount of discriminatory practice prevailed, but this was very
much less sharp than that which generally prevailed in the army
or in northern-not to speak of southern-civil society during the
mid-nineteenth century. It is true that, by regulation, positions
open to them were rather severely limited, though, even here,
later provisions modified this, and, in any event, the regulations
were not strictly enforced. It is also true that contrabands were
employed, at times, in tasks normally required of men having
a higher rating— and receiving higher pay— than that accorded
them, and they were used, in disproportionate numbers, in par-
ticularly laborious, unhealthy, and dangerous work.

Moreover, certain officers, apparently more prejudiced than
others, accentuated what discrimination did exist. David Dixon
Porter is a good example of this type. His use of the expression
"niggers” and the distinction he drew between "men” and
"darkies” in written communications to a superior officer have
already been cited. 49 Similarly, his instructions that contrabands
were to receive no more than $9 per month, issued after the
Navy Department had announced the policy of enlisting them
with ratings up to landsmen (who were paid $12 per month),
and in face of the fact that even first class boys received $10,
would seem to have no other explanation than bigotry. 50

Indeed, Porter, in his capacity as commander of the Mississippi
Squadron, issued a general order instituting Jim Crowism. In
July, 1863, he announced that "Owing to the increasing sickness
in the squadron, and the scarcity of men, it becomes necessary
for the efficiency of the vessels to use the contrabands to a greater
extent than heretofore.” He went on to remark that white men,

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY

12 5

when performing strenuous labor under a southern sun, seemed
most prone to disease, and that, therefore, Negroes only were to
be used under such conditions, with "every precaution being
taken to keep them from being taken sick.” They might be used
"to defend the vessels” where a deficiency in the crew required.
This policy, it was carefully explained, was "dictated by neces-
sity,” yet it was "believed that in cases of emergency the blacks
will make efficient men.” Porter announced that contrabands
might be promoted to all ranks except that of petty officers
and first-class firemen and seamen, the last two exceptions being
contrary to Navy Department policy as enunciated by the secre-
tary eight months earlier.

Moreover, said this remarkable order:

Only clothes enough will be issued to them to make them comfortable
until they are out of debt, and in all cases they must be kept distinct
from the rest of the crew. They can be stationed at guns when vacan-
cies exist, to pass shot and powder, handle handspikes, at train-tackles
and side-tackles, pumps, and fire buckets; and can be exercised separate-
ly at great guns and small arms.

Porter ended this pronouncement by asserting that Negroes
"are not naturally clean” and that, therefore, "great attention
will be necessary” on the part of the officers to make and keep
them so, and by remarking— rather late in the game— that, “The
policy of the Government is to use the blacks, and every officer
should do his utmost to carry this policy out.” 51

It was this same officer, as a Rear Admiral in command of the
North Atlantic Blockade Squadron, who instructed one of his
division commanders, late in November, 1864, to "issue an order
to all the vessels of your command not to employ negroes as
lookout, as they are not fit to [be] intrusted with such important
duty ” 5 2

There is evidence, as might be expected, that other naval
officers suffered from similar prejudices and in some cases there
seems to have been greater eagerness among them to prevent
what were referred to as "Negro excesses” than to defeat the
rebels. 53

One commodore informed a captain that conditions were "in
a bad state at Ship Island [Mississippi] for the niggers have

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the upper hand” and the “poor whites” were suffering. 54 Reveal-
ing, too, was the report of one J. S. Watson to Porter to the effect
that planters frequently complained to him of the “depreda-
tions” of Negroes, “such as killing their beeves and hogs.” He
asked what he was “authorized to do in such cases,” though
adding that he had “heretofore, when complaints have been
made . . . taken on board the offenders and punished them by
confinement in irons according to offense committed, and when
released returned them to the place taken from.” Porter’s en-
dorsement approved this procedure, declaring that “when the
negroes commit these atrocities you must punish them.” 65

A year later four Union sailors were actually captured by Con-
federate forces at Lewisville, South Carolina, while trying to
assist a planter “to restore order amongst the negroes.” 56 Some
evidence of an inferential nature bearing upon this same point
appears in a “private and confidential” letter from Du Pont to
the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in December, 1862, wherein
occur these sentences: “I am working in all the contrabands I
can. I am fortunate in having [Commander William] Reynolds
on the Vermont , who is kind to them.” 57

How did the Negroes conduct themselves, or, better, how were
they reported to have conducted themselves, in the Union naval
service? The available evidence points clearly to a favorable
reply. Indeed, this writer considers it a rather remarkable fact
that he has been able to discover but two disparaging reports
concerning the conduct of individual Negro sailors.

In one case. Acting Ensign M. E. Flanigan, reporting the cap
ture of his ship, the gunboat Petrel, near Yazoo City, Mississippi,
declared that “during the engagement the officers and men acted
most gallantly with the exception of a few contrabands who were
lately shipped.” This, however, did not agree with the account
given by the commander of the Petrel, in which all but two of
his officers are condemned for cowardice, and mention is made
of the fact that but ten of the crew were white, while “the rest
were contrabands, and part of those were sick.” No adverse
comment as to their behavior is made. 58 The other instance,
where a Negro pilot was found to have left his post under fire
and so contributed to the loss of his vessel, the Dai Ching, has
already been noticed. 59

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127

Favorable comments on the behavior of individuals or groups
of Negroes are more numerous. One officer, reporting a success-
ful raid upon a Confederate steamer, praised the conduct of his
officers and men and added: “I was compelled by necessity to
include five colored men in the party, and they behaved ad-
mirably under fire.” 60

A daring adventure culminating in the kidnapping of a
postman together with much official and personal mail destined
for Charleston, South Carolina, was accomplished by a white
petty officer and two enlisted contrabands, with the aid of a
third Negro who withdrew with the raiders and joined the
Union fleet. The petty officer was promoted to the rank of Act-
ing Ensign, while Flag Officer Du Pont remarked, “The two
contrabands [never named] who went with him are also, I think,
deserving of an advanced rating.” 61

There was but one Union sailor to survive and escape from
the fierce hand-to-hand encounter that marked the surprise
boarding and subsequent capture of the U.S.S. Water Witch in
Ossabaw Sound, South Carolina, in June, 1864. This was a con-
traband named Peter McIntosh. According to the report of
Admiral J. A. Dahlgren to the Secretary of the Navy it was his
escape and the warnings he then gave that saved several other
Federal vessels. The surgeon of the Water Witch, captured and
later released, reported that a Negro landsman, Jeremiah Sills,
who was killed in the battle, “fought most desperately, and this
while men who despised him were cowering near, with idle
cutlasses in the racks jogging their elbows.” 62

Pertinent, too, is the remark of the Army’s Adjutant-General
to the Secretary of War, early in 1863 when the army was con-
sidering the formation of Negro artillery units, that “The ex-
perience of the Navy is that the Blacks handle heavy guns well.” 68

Five Negro members of the Union Navy behaved with such
outstanding gallantry that they were recommended for the
nation’s most coveted award, the Congressional Medal of Honor,
and it is certain that at least four received this medal.

Commander William G. Temple, of the U.S.S. Pontoosuc, in
a report to Rear-Admiral Porter, recommended that Clement
Dees, a Negro of the rank of seaman, be awarded the Medal of
Honor “for gallantry, skill, and coolness in action during the

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operations in and about Cape Fear river, which extended from
December 24, 1864, to February 22, 1865, and which resulted
in the capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington.” 04 The official
record of recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, how-
ever, does not list Clement Dees, and so it must be assumed that
either the record is in error, or that the recommendation was
not approved. 65

Aaron Anderson, Negro landsman of the Wyandank, was rec-
ommended for and awarded a Medal of Honor for bravery while
serving with an expedition on Mattox Creek, Virginia, March
16-18, 1865. A launch under Acting Ensign Summers, whose
“crew . . . were all black but two” was dispatched “with orders
to clear that creek which [was done] most thoroughly; destroyed
three schooners under a fire of musketry from 300 or 400 rebels,
which fire in a few moments cut away half of his oars, piercing
the launch in many places. . . .” 66

A second Negro sailor to win the Medal was Robert Blake,
listed only as “contraband,” a member of the crew of the Marble-
head. In the bitter engagement with Confederate batteries on
Stono River, South Carolina, Christmas Day, 1863, Blake, “serv-
ing as a powder boy, displayed extraordinary courage, alacrity
and intelligence in the discharge of his duty under trying cir-
cumstances and merited the admiration of all.” 67

John Lawson, Negro landsman aboard the flagship Hartford ,
in the battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864, earned a Medal of
Honor. To quote from the recommendation and citation:

[He] was one of the six men stationed at the shell-whip on the berth
deck. A shell killed or wounded the entire number. Lawson was wounded
in the leg and thrown with great violence against the side of the ship;
but as soon as he recovered himself, although begged to go below, he
refused and went back to the shell-whip, where he remained during
the action . 08

Joachim Pease, Negro seaman aboard the Kearsage, earned his
Medal of Honor on June 19, 1864, in the historic encounter
that resulted in the destruction of the Confederate raider, Ala-
bama, off Cherbourg, France. Captain Winslow of the Kearsage,
in submitting Pease's name to the Secretary of the Navy for
special attention, declared that he had “exhibited marked cool-

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ness and good conduct.” His immediate superior officer, Acting
Master Sumner, reported to the ship's Executive Officer, the day
following the battle, that . . no one could be distinguished
from another in courage or fortitude. . . . Among those showing
still higher qualifications [was] Joachim Pease (colored seaman),
loader of same [No. 1] gun. The conduct of the latter in battle
fully sustained his reputation as one of the best men in the
ship.” 69

At this point one may appropriately investigate the facts con-
cerning combat casualties suffered by Negro members of the
Union fleet.

The problem facing one trying to ascertain these facts is most
difficult, and hope of a definitive answer is probably illusory.
Once again, correspondence engendered by inquisitive folk
offers some assistance.

Between 1900 and 1913 the Navy Department received letters
from ten individuals asking for casualty figures. The most re-
vealing reply was that signed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus
Daniels. Mr. Daniels stated that the best official figures on casual-
ties in the Union Navy showed a total of 3,220 killed, wounded,
and missing. But this, he asserted was

known to be a very low estimate. The total number of casualties re-
ported after the attack on Fort Fisher was 93, but the actual number
of killed, wounded, and missing was 393. The reported casualties in
the Battle of Hampton Roads were 75, but 241 were killed on the
Congress and Cumberland alone . 70

On the basis of the data presented, it would appear to be
safe to say that about one-fourth of the total reported battle
casualties were suffered by Negroes, or that of the 3,220 men
listed as killed, wounded, and missing, approximately 800 were
Negroes.

Some details may be ascertained by a careful reading of the
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies , supple-
mented by a study of the war year Reports of the Secretary of
the Navy and the attached documents. These are presented in
tabular form in the appendix.

It will be observed that, up to this point, mortality from dis-
ease, in the navy, has not been considered. No figure for this

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13°

appears to be available, but it is practically certain that deaths
from sickness far outnumbered those from shell and bullet in
the navy as they did in the army. Carrying over the figures from
the army, one sees that while about eleven thousand members
of Negro regiments were killed and wounded, about thirty
thousand died of disease. Thus, one has an approximate ratio
between deaths from disease and all battle casualties of about
three to one. Applying this ratio to the very approximate num-
ber of 800 battle casualties among Negroes in the Union Navy
would lead to the belief that something like 2,400 Negro mem-
bers of the Union Navy died of disease.

While the figures just cited are largely conjecture, there is
no question whatsoever that disease was a most serious problem
in the Navy. 71 Since Negroes were used, in large part, in the
most dangerous and punishing types of work, and were par-
ticularly used to replace whites during the “sickly season,” it
may be believed that in the navy, as in the army, disease hit the
Negro with greater severity than it did the white.

One may add, too, that not all the casualties incurred by
Negroes in association with the navy befell those who were
regularly enlisted. The deaths of others are reported from time
to time, the most terrible instance being that which occurred
aboard the transport, Champion No. 3, near the junction of the
Cane and Red Rivers, on April 26, 1864. The vessel, loaded down
with almost two hundred contrabands, men, women and chil-
dren, while attempting to pass a Confederate fort, received a
shell in the boiler, and in the ensuing explosion about one
hundred and eighty-five Negroes were killed. 72

Finally, it is to be noted that the murder of Negro naval per-
sonnel captured by the Confederacy was, as in the case of the
soldier, not unknown. Thus, in March, 1862, Federal naval
forces attempted a landing near New Smyrna, Florida, from the
ships Penguin and Henry Andrew. Included in this landing
party was the pilot of the latter ship, a Negro. He was wounded
in the foot and captured in a battle that ensued when Confeder-
ate troops ambushed the invaders. Seven members of the Union
force were killed in the fight, while the Negro was hanged. 73

Another Negro, George Brimsmaid, landsman aboard the
U.S. Brig Perry, served as the advance scout of a sixteen man

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reconnaissance party on Magnolia Beach, South Carolina, in
December, 1863. All were captured, though one later escaped, but
only fourteen prisoners survived, the other, Brimsmaid, being
“officially unaccounted for,” to quote a Confederate general's
report. The official record flatly asserts that this Negro prisoner
was hanged at Murrell's Inlet, on December 5, 1863. 74

In June, 1864, the Queen City was captured. Some of the
crew members perished and some escaped— including several
Negroes— but among the prisoners were nine Negroes. According
to the medical officer aboard the Queen City, a Confederate offi-
cer had remarked to him that “he supposed they [the Negro
prisoners] would be treated as are the rest they had captured,
kill them.” 75 Generally, however, Negro naval prisoners seem
to have been subjected to the same treatment as those of the
Army— close confinement, hard labor, or sale into slavery.

The unique and inestimable value of the Negro to the Union
navy, as to its army, was his acquaintance with the enemy and
his terrain. It is impossible to study thousands of first-hand
reports from army and navy officers— many of them far from
sympathetic towards the Negro— without concluding that the
greatest single source of military and naval intelligence, par-
ticularly on a tactical level, for the Federal government during
the Civil War was the Negro. And knowing the crucial impor-
tance of information concerning the enemy for any successful
military effort, these hundreds and thousands of willing and
eager scouts, spies, guides, pilots, and informers, available only
to the Union forces, constituted a major— albeit overlooked—
source of superiority for the Union forces as opposed to their
enemy.

Frequently Negroes, both enlisted and civilian, provided units
of the Federal fleet with information (and at times personally
guided those units) making possible the destruction or capture
of valuable stores of sugar, rice, cotton, corn and salt. 76 Indeed,
at times, the activities of Negroes were directly responsible for
the destruction or capture of entire vessels.

Thus, in 1861, Commander Lockwood of the Daylight, in re-
porting to Flag Officer Stringham of the Atlantic Blockade Squad-
ron the capture of a Confederate vessel in Virginia, explained
that this was due to the intelligence brought him by “four fine-

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looking negroes-contraband of war. . . .” 77 In June, 1862,
Lieutenant Braine, commanding the Monticello, off Wilming-
ton, North Carolina, reported that a skiff with eight Negro men
-fugitive slaves from South Carolina— had reached him. These
Negroes told of two Confederate schooners being fitted to run
the blockade and gave their precise location. As a result. Lieu-
tenant Braine was ordered to attack and, if possible, capture these
ships. Shortly thereafter this officer led an assaulting party
which destroyed the vessels plus sixty bales of cotton and con-
siderable quantities of turpentine and rosin. 78

Interesting and relevant information is contained in the report
of Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Couthoy, commanding the
Osage, covering his activities from October 4 through October 8,
1863. The task of his ship was to patrol the Red River from
Fort Adams to Ellis Cliffs. Lieutenant Couthoy learned from
contrabands, on October 4, of river crossings being made by
Confederate units. The information was specific enough to
result in the capture of three ferries. The next day another
fugitive arrived and informed the officer of another crossing
point. Men dispatched to the point returned with several pris-
oners, while early on October 6, two Confederate soldiers were
“brought in ... by a party of contrabands who gave chase on
their own account.” Shortly thereafter Negroes told of the loca-
tion of a steamer, and as a result twenty Federal sailors, with
“Benjamin Williams, enlisted contraband, as guide” went to
the designated spot. They found and destroyed not one but two
steamers, as well as a skiff used for ferrying purposes, and cap-
tured eleven Confederate men and officers. Lieutenant Couthoy
concluded: “Benjamin Williams, first-class boy, rendered im-
portant service as a guide. But for his intimate knowledge of
all the short cuts to the Red River . . . the expedition would
have proved a failure.” 79

On January 5, 1865, a fugitive slave came to the Winnebago,
off Mobile Bay, and informed its commander of the location of
several enemy sloops, plus valuable stores, all, according to the
Negro, without armed guards. Lieutenant-Commander Kirkland
promptly dispatched an expedition which returned with four
captured vessels and much materiel, and reported that it had
met no opposition. 80

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY 133

In discussing services rendered by Negroes resulting in the
capture of entire vessels by the Union fleet mention must be
made of the unique instance when Negroes personally delivered
a Confederate steamer, the Planter, to blockading Federal ships.

This episode, of the fugitive Planter and his slave-capturers,
which fired the imagination of the entire Union, occurred on
May 13, 1862. On sunrise of that day Acting Volunteer Lieuten-
ant J. F. Nickels, commanding the Onward, off Charleston, was
startled to see “a steamer coming from the direction of Fort
Sumter and steering directly” for his ship. He “immediately
beat to quarters,” sprang the ship around so as to bring her
broadsides to bear, and was preparing to fire when he observed
“that the steamer, now rapidly approaching, had a white flag
set at the fore.” 81

Aboard were sixteen Negroes including eight men, five women,
and three children, all slaves, and all acknowledging as their
leader the man who had piloted the vessel to the Union fleet,
Robert Smalls. 82 The Planter, a three hundred ton, side-wheel,
wood-burning, very low draft, armed steamer was a dispatch
and transportation vessel attached to the engineer department at
Charleston, under Brigadier-General Ripley. It may well be
believed that this officer was very much upset over the abduction
of this ship especially since it followed by but a few days the
disappearance of his barge which had also been brought to the
blockading fleet by fugitive slaves. Adding to the general's
chagrin was the fact that in delivering the Planter to his foe,
the slaves also presented the latter with her own armament, a
32 pounder and a 24 pounder howitzer, a X inch Columbiad
carriage, as well as four pieces of artillery which she was to have
delivered that day to one of the forts of the dty. The abduction
had been long and carefully planned, the commencement coming
at about 3 a.m. while the white officers were ashore. The vessel
gave the proper signals while within earshot of land, and her
approach at Fort Sumter was timed to coincide with that of the
guard boat and so she was unchallenged.

Half the prize money of over nine thousand dollars was
assigned, by Congressional act 83 to the Negroes responsible for
“rescuing [the vessel] from the enemies of the Government.”
Robert Smalls was personally interrogated by Flag Officer

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Du Pont who found him to be “superior to any [fugitive Negro]
who has yet come into the lines, intelligent as many of them
have been. His information has been most interesting, and por-
tions of it of the utmost importance/'

By direction of Du Pont, Smalls was employed as the pilot of
the Planter during the four months it remained under Navy
supervision, 84 and he took part with it in attacks upon Con-
federate positions. 85 Smalls is said to have served, thereafter,
as a pilot aboard other vessels including the Crusader, Huron,
Paul Jones and Keokuk. 66

Quite fittingly and dramatically, Robert Smalls piloted the
Planter into Charleston when that city fell in February, 1865,
and he guided the ship into the city, with Henry Ward Beecher,
William Lloyd Garrison, and George Thompson aboard her,
when the flag of the United States was hoisted above Fort Sumter
on April 15, 1865, the day Lincoln died. 87

Information as to the location, strength, disposition, move-
ments and activities of the enemy, both of his land and naval
forces, were brought by Negroes in a constant stream to all
echelons of the Union command. 88 And specific references recur
as to how valuable such information was. It helped, for example,
Union officers to be prepared beforehand for the actions of enemy
infantry, artillery, and naval power, in ascertaining the depth of
water, the existence of obstructions, the abandonment of towns
or their reinforcement, as well as in obtaining specific data on
enemy naval habits, schedules, and construction. 89 Indeed, at
times, charts were changed, naval flotilla formations altered,
areas entered, and assaults postponed on the basis, very largely,
of data supplied by Negroes. 90

The major expedition lasting from March 14 through March
27, 1863, and seeking an approach into Vicksburg from the rear
in which General Grant and Admiral Porter personally partici-
pated, supported by General Sherman, was undertaken as a
consequence of “information obtained from a negro." And
Negroes were the eyes and ears of the Louisville, Cincinnati,
Carondelet, Mound City and Pittsburg, plus four accompanying
mortar vessels and four tugs while they pushed up Steele’s Bayou
and pressed through uncharted waters within enemy territory.
They kept the commanders constantly informed of the location,

NEGROES IN THE UNION NAVY 135

strength, and activities of the enemy as well as of the terrain.
Porter and Grant, upon reaching Rolling Ford, decided that
enveloping Vicksburg from the rear was not practical and re-
turned, but it is clear that neither the going nor the returning
would have been possible without the intelligence provided by
Negroes, both those who formed parts of the crews and those who
flocked to the Yankees from within Mississippi’s heart. 91

It is to be noted that attempts were made by the Navy to sys-
tematize the obtaining of information from Negroes within Con-
federate areas. That this was, at times, accomplished may be
seen from the fact that the commanding officer of one vessel,
the Stepping Stones, while patrolling the Nansemond River,
Virginia, regularly contacted, at night, by prearranged signals,
certain free Negroes. A boat from the Stepping Stones would
pull onto shore at a designated time and place, take aboard
fugitive slaves, and carry back the latest information as to condi-
tions and affairs within the zone of the enemy. 92

The absence in historical literature of any consideration of
the role of Negroes in the Union Navy is a serious failing.
Negroes constituted some 25 per cent of the total personnel;
they performed all duties required of sailors aboard mid-nine-
teenth century men-of-war, they conducted themselves well, and,
at times, with conspicuous gallantry, under fire, and their con-
tribution, particularly in terms of information concerning the
enemy’s potential, disposition, and terrain was invaluable. The
role of the Federal fleet in determining the outcome of the Civil
War long has been recognized as decisive. The role of the Negro
members of that fleet was of primary importance.

ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITIES
OF SOUTHERN NEGROES, 1865

Very few studies have been made of the activities of the Negro
people immediately following the Civil War. 1 Indeed, available
literature forces the investigator to ask himself: Was the Southern
Negro, in the midst of a situation whose revolutionary quality
consisted in his own altered status, passive and inarticulate?

We shall attempt an answer to this question by narrating the
facts concerning organized political and economic activities car-
ried on by Southern Negroes during the single year, 1865. 2 In
this way may be discovered something of their demands and
aspirations, enunciated when gun-barrels had hardly cooled, and
when the Bourbon, though defeated in battle, still retained con-
trol over what local political power then existed.

It will be well to begin this study by establishing the last point,
that is, demonstrating the fact of the continuing political domi-
nation of the South by the former slaveholders in the imme-
diately post-bellum months, the months of the Johnson-backed
state governments.

This may be done most expeditiously by selecting one state
as fairly typical of the entire South and by analyzing briefly its
Johnsonian provisional government. For this purpose South
Carolina will be used.

One month after the surrender of all Confederate forces, in
June, 1865, President Johnson appointed Benjamin F. Perry,
strongly pro-slavery pre-Civil War Unionist, who had held office
under the Confederacy, to the position of Provisional Governor
of South Carolina.

One of Governor Perry's first acts was to reinstate in public
office those who had held such positions prior to May, 1865. He
then conferred the suffrage upon loyal citizens who had been
voters before secession, and called upon these people to elect

136

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 137

delegates to a Constitutional Convention to be held in Septem-
ber, 1865.

The composition of this convention, which met in Columbia
on the thirteenth, was what might be expected from such an
electorate. Among the delegates were J. L. Orr, a former Con-
federate Senator and colonel, F. W. Pickens, the first Confeder-
ate governor of the state, S. McGowan, a Confederate major-
general, and several additional generals and other high-ranking
officers of the now defunct Confederate Army. In addition,
among the approximately one hundred delegates, were twelve
former members of the secession convention, including D. L.
Wardlow who had been its president, and J. A. Inglis who had
introduced therein the secession motion. 3 Such were the per-
sonnel designated, ostensibly, to remake the social order of South
Carolina!

The constitution resulting from the deliberations of such indi-
viduals (which, incidentally, was not submitted to the people
for ratification) dealt with the Negro in a manner that must
have surprised nobody, i.e., it relegated him to the lowest rung
of a carefully devised system of exploitation. Governor Perry in
his opening address before this convention had set the keynote
by asserting, ". . . this is a white man's government, and intended
for white men only. . . . The Supreme Court of the United
States has decided that the Negro is not an American citizen
under the Federal Constitution.'' 4 In the apt words of the New
York Tribune (October 17, 1865): "Rebellion, its birthplace in
Charleston, having failed to save their cause, they have carried
to Columbia and seek to preserve it there."

It was a committee of this convention which drafted the
notorious "Black Code" as a guide for the members of the next
legislative assembly. And that legislature, composed of the mem-
bers who had sat throughout the Civil War, met from October 25
to November 13, 1865, and promptly enacted that instrument
of discrimination, subjugation, and attempted degradation. 5

This, in broadest outline, was the political situation in South
Carolina in 1865, and conditions, while not identical, were similar
throughout the South. Immense and disheartening obstacles
they were, certainly, in the path of complete Negro liberation,
but a tremendous fact remained— the fact of the physical destruc-

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don of chattel slavery. With the determination and courage that
have marked the American Negro, he acted, and some of the
record of this remains.

On January 9, a numerously attended convention of Negroes
assembled in New Orleans and adopted resolutions recommend-
ing co-operative buying and selling on the part of their newly
liberated brothers as well as special assistance for the Negro
veteran. 6 On the same day Negroes of Nashville petitioned the
Tennessee (loyal element) Constitutional Convention, which had
assembled on the eighth, for the right to vote and for protection
in the courts, and urged that slavery be expressly forbidden in
the new constitution. In the weeks that followed, the Houses
of the reorganized Tennessee government were appealed to sev-
eral times by Negroes for the rights of citizenship, but these were
denied. In April, therefore, Negroes from Nashville, Memphis,
and Knoxville issued a call for a statewide convention, which
was held that summer. 7

In February there began a series of remarkable meetings
among the Negroes of Norfolk, Virginia. This was precipitated
by an attempt on the part of certain white Unionists, in January,
to oust the military and restore civilian rule to the city. The
Negroes who, under General Butler, had been, as they declared,
“protected in the full enjoyment of the rights and liberties of
loyal men,” did not object to civil rule, per se, but did object
to the fact that this proposed civil rule “contemplated no repre-
sentation of their rights and interests."

A committee of Negroes was formed at once and, at its call, a
mass meeting was held at Mechanics' Hall on February 27, with
H. F. Trimble as chairman and George W. Cook, secretary.
Resolutions were adopted protesting against the restoration of
civil rule on other than “a loyal and equal basis" and copies
were sent to President Lincoln as well as to local military com-
manders.

During the following weeks further organizational efforts went
forward among the Norfolk Negroes resulting, on April 4, in
the holding of another mass meeting, at the same hall, with
the Rev. William I. Hodges 8 in the chair. At this meeting was
formed the Colored Monitor Union Club, the primary objects
of which were, as stated in its constitution:

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 1 39

to promote union and harmony among the colored portion of this
community, and to enlighten each other on the important subject
of the right of universal suffrage to all loyal men, without distinction
of color, and to memorialize the Congress of the United States to allow
the colored citizens the equal right of franchise with other citizens; to
call frequent meetings, and procure suitable speakers for the same;
to form auxiliary clubs throughout the Eastern District of Virginia, to
give publicity to our views all over the country, and to assist the present
administration in putting down the enemies of the government, and
to protect, strengthen, and defend all friends of the Union.

Two days later the organization of this club was completed
with the election of officers and thereafter at regular and fre-
quent intervals— as on April 25, May 2, and May 16— it held “large
and enthusiastic meetings ... at which much information was
disseminated, respecting the movement in behalf of negro suf-
frage." In addition, on May 11, a mass meeting of the Negroes
of Norfolk, including many not members of the Union Club,
was held in a Negro Baptist Church. The building was jammed,
and the participants elected as presiding officer Dr. Thomas
Bayne, a dentist, itinerant preacher, and one-time fugitive slave. 9
Here nine resolutions were adopted unanimously and they merit
quotation in full:

1st. Resolved, That the rights and interests of the colored citizens of
Virginia are more directly, immediately and deeply affected in the
restoration of the State to the Federal Union than any other class of
citizens; and hence, that we have peculiar claims to be heard in regard
to the question of its reconstruction, and that we cannot keep silence
without dereliction of duty to ourselves, to our country, and to our
God.

2nd. Resolved, That personal servitude having been abolished in
Virginia, it behooves us, and is demanded of us, by every consideration
of right and duty, to speak and act as freemen, and as such to claim and
insist upon equality before the law, and equal rights of suffrage at the
ballot-box.

3rd. Resolved, That it is a wretched policy and most unwise statesman-
ship that would withhold from the laboring population of the country
any of the rights of citizenship essential to their well-being and to their
advancement and improvement as citizens.

4th. Resolved, That invidious political or legal distinctions, on ac-
count of color merely, if acquiesced in, or voluntarily submitted to, is

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inconsistent with our own self-respect, or the respect of others, placing
us at great disadvantages, and seriously retards our advancement or
progress in improvement, and that the removal of such disabilities and
distinctions are alike demanded by sound political economy, by pa-
triotism, humanity and religion.

5th. Resolved, That we will prove ourselves worthy of the elective
franchise, by insisting upon it as a right, by not tamely submitting to
its deprivation, by never abusing it by voting the State out of the Union,
and never using it for purposes of rebellion, treason or oppression.

6th. Resolved, That the safety of all loyal men, black and white, in
the midst of the recently slaveholding States, requires that all loyal
men, black or white, should have equal political and civil rights, and
that this is a necessity as a protection against the votes of secessionists
and disloyal men.

7th. Resolved, That traitors shall not dictate or prescribe to us the
terms or conditions of our citizenship, so help us God.

8th. Resolved, That as far as in us lies, we will not patronize or hold
business relations with those who deny to us our equal rights.

9th. Resolved, That we recommend that a Delegate Convention be
held for the purpose of carrying out the foregoing objects and designs,
and that, this meeting appoint a committee of seven to aid in getting
up such Convention.

Meanwhile, in the month of May, President Johnson recog-
nized the Alexandria Unionist government of Francis H. Pier-
pont as the official government of Virginia. Upon his inaugura-
tion, a call was issued for an election to the state assembly, to
be held on May 25, with Negroes barred from the voting.

As a result, a proposal was immediately made in Norfolk, by
a number of white men, for a “mass meeting of all loyal citizens
without distinction of birth, or color, to be held at the City Hall,
May the 23rd, 1865, to take such action as might be deemed
desirable in view of the coming elections.” The notice was
extremely short, but so great was the political interest of the
people, particularly the Negro people, that upon the appointed
time about one hundred and fifty whites and two thousand
Negroes gathered at Norfolk's City Hall.

The elected chairman was a radical white lawyer, Calvin Pep-
per. 10 The assembled Negro and white people unanimously
adopted a series of resolutions recommended to them by a popu-
larly chosen committee of two white and five Negro men. These

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 141

resolutions demanded that the state government be reorganized
on the basis of suffrage to all loyal citizens, “without distinction
of birth, sect, creed, or color,” urged Negroes to vote on May 25,
regardless of the lily-white law and declared that, “in view of
the exigencies of the times and the necessity that all men elected
to state offices should be men of tried fidelity to the Union
and of liberal sentiments, and that the candidates now before
the public are in no way representative of the loyal citizens
of Norfolk, but only of themselves,” they urged the election of
their own slate. This slate consisted of D. W. Todd, Sr., for the
Senate, and Francis De Cordy and James H. Hall for the House-
all white men.

These resolutions were forwarded to President Johnson and
to radical Republican Congressmen, and appeared in the local
paper as well as in the more progressive press of the nation gen-
erally. The next day another well-attended meeting was held
at which the candidates were searchingly questioned as to their
attitude toward enfranchising the Negro, and all but De Cordy
pledged themselves to vote for universal manhood suffrage if
elected.

On the morrow the election was held. The Negroes had agreed
to meet at the Bute Street African Methodist Church and there
collectively to decide as to the mechanics of their first attempt
at voting. By eight in the morning of this May 25, over five
hundred Negro men were present, and before nightfall the num-
ber was doubled. Again officers were elected, with the Rev. J. M.
Brown as chairman and Dr. Thomas Bayne as secretary.

A committee of five was appointed at once which commenced
preparations for voting by dividing the people present into four
bodies in accordance with the wards in which they resided.
Originally, the general feeling was that the Negroes so organized
ought to proceed immediately, in a body, to the polls and attempt
to vote, but, fearing “lest the obstruction to the polling, caused
by the presence of such large bodies of men at the polling place,
should afford a pretext for disturbance, it was decided to appoint
four committees to proceed to the polling places in each ward,
and ascertain, by tending their own individual votes, whether
the votes of colored citizens would be received, either on the

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polling book, or, if not, on the separate list provided by law for
contested or disputed votes/' 11

While the committees were on their errand, the Negroes
prayed. Soon the men returned and it was learned that the offi-
cials of the first, third, and fourth wards had refused absolutely
to receive the votes of Negroes, while those of the second ward
said they might register their votes on the separate list only. The
Negroes of the second ward then proceeded, ten at a time, to their
polling place and so voted, while the ballots of the other Negroes
were received, by name, by the committees themselves for each
of the other three wards. This consumed the entire day, but
the action was taken solemnly and “with the most perfect order
and decorum." The results showed a solid vote of 1066 (712 at
the Church and 354 at the polling place) for the ticket of Todd,
De Cordy, and Hall. 12

The Negroes adjourned for a late meal and returned that
same evening. The result of the voting was then put into affidavit
form and it was decided to present these to the Virginia legisla-
ture and contest the election. Funds were gathered making pos-
sible the publication of five thousand copies of a pamphlet
detailing the foregoing facts. 13

On June 5 these indefatigable Norfolk Negroes assembled
again in a mass meeting, this one held in the Catherine Street
Baptist Church. An elected committee, consisting of Dr. Thomas
Bayne, Joseph T. Wilson, the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet,
William Keeling, the Rev. J. M. Brown, the Rev. Thomas Hen-
son, Thomas F. Paige, Jr., and George W. Cook, drafted an
“Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Virginia, to the
People of the United States." This document is of intense
interest and of a most revealing nature.

The “Address" asserted as its purposes that of placing before
the American people “the present position of the colored popula-
tion of the Southern States generally" and of pressing “their
claim for equal suffrage in particular." The Negro people de- .
manded “the full enjoyment of those privileges of full citizen-
ship," not only because these adhered to them as their “un-
doubted right," but also because they were “indispensable to
that elevation and prosperity of our people which must be the
desire of every patriot."

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 143

America was not a land belonging exclusively to its white in-
habitants, the Address went on, for the Negro, too, had labored
and fought here. The existing situation was intolerable. Re-
cently, in Richmond, a secessionist, elected mayor, had thrown
eight hundred Negroes into jail; in Portsmouth a mayor had
just been elected on a white supremacy ticket; everywhere plant-
ers were organizing, offering a maximum of $60 per year as
wages, and not paying even this; Negroes were being beaten
and some killed for resisting such forced labor. Even in Norfolk,
with a Union mayor, “some of our white friends who have nobly
distinguished themselves by their efforts in our behalf, have been
threatened with arrest."

We do not want the interminable military occupation of our
Southland, said these Negroes, and if we have our rights, com-
plete and unfettered, this will not be needed. But remember,
the Address warned, if this is not done and the South is aban-
doned to the former slaveholders, not only the Negro but the
entire nation suffers. For while the Negro will not vote, he will
be counted towards the South's representation in Congress, and
this will mean an even more numerous southern delegation than
before the war. And leaving this canker of inequality in your
midst means a lack of internal security for it creates four and
a half million potential, if not actual, enemies.

Moreover, we are men, and by all the assertions you have made
and all the doctrines you have ostensibly embraced you must
treat us as men. We are not stupid, we are not lazy, and we do
know what freedom means. Freedom means honest work at
honest wages.

To their fellow Negroes, the Address said: Be not supine, be
up and active. So very much depends upon ourselves. In addi-
tion to fighting for our political rights, we must battle for the
land and for protection as workingmen. Specifically, said this
remarkable document:

Everywhere in Virginia, and doubtless in all other States, your late
owners are forming Labor Associations, for the purpose of fixing and
maintaining, without the least reference to your wishes or wants, the
prices to be paid for your labor; and we say to you, “Go and do like-
wise.” Let Labor Associations be at once formed among the colored
people throughout the length and breadth of the United States, having

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for their object the protection of the colored laborer, by regulating
fairly the price of labor; by affording facilities for obtaining employ-
ment by a system of registration; and last, though by no means least,
by undertaking, on behalf of the colored laborer, to enforce legally the
fulfillment of all contracts made with him.

And as to the land, this Address declared:

The surest guarantee for the independence and ultimate elevation
of the colored people will be found in their becoming the owners of
the soil on which they live and labor. To this end, let them form Land
Associations, in which, by the regular payment of small instalments, a
fund may be created for the purchase, at all land sales, of land on be-
half of any investing member, in the name of the Association, the
Association holding a mortgage on the land until, by the continued
payment of a regular subscription, the sum advanced by the Association
and the interest upon it are paid off, when the occupier gets a clear
title. 14

While these events were occurring in Norfolk, southern Negroes
in other areas were by no means inactive. In the spring, Georgia
Negroes were circulating, signing, and forwarding to President
Johnson a petition reading: “We, the undersigned. Colored
Citizens of the State of Georgia, respectfully represent, that we
are loyal, always have been loyal, and always will remain loyal;
and, in order to make our loyalty most effective in the service
of the Government, we humbly petition to be allowed to exercise
the right of suffrage.” 15 In June, a committee of five Savannah
Negroes transmitted a petition, signed by three hundred and
fifty of their fellows praying for the suffrage, to Senator Charles
Sumner, with the request that he send it on to the President. 16

In May, a petition to the President of similar purport, but
greater length, was “being extensively circulated” in North Caro-
lina. The Negroes addressed Andrew Johnson, himself a North
Carolinian, with “great confidence” for they felt “that some of
his [Lincoln’s] great and good spirit lingers to bless his successor.”
While in many respects poor, still they felt themselves “rich in
the possession of liberty” and proud to “have had the privilege
of fighting for our country.” They stood ready to offer their
blood for her in the future and felt impelled “to say that such
blood as that shed at Fort Wagner and Port Hudson is not alto-
gether unworthy of such service.” The petition prayed for “the

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145

privilege of voting.” It seemed clear to these Negroes that men
who were “willing on the field of danger to carry the Republic's
muskets, in the days of Peace ought to be permitted to carry
its ballots.” They could see no justice in “denying the elective
franchise to men who have been fighting for the country, while
it is freely given to men who have just returned from 4 years
fighting against it.” The petition ended by reminding the Presi-
dent that free Negroes had voted in North Carolina as late as
1835, and repeating that what was wanted and needed now was
the enfranchisement “of all loyal men without regard to color.” 17
Accompanying this petition campaign, the Negroes of North
Carolina held many meetings from May through September at
which programs were formulated and delegates elected to a pro-
jected Negro State Convention, which met in Raleigh that fall.

On the last day of May, the Negroes of Petersburg, Virginia,
held a mass meeting at the Union Street Methodist Church,
discussed their needs and appointed a committee of nine to draft
resolutions for presentation at a meeting to be held one week
later. On June 6 the second gathering occurred, and resolutions
were read and unanimously adopted as representing the views
of the resident Negroes. 18

In a preamble these men declared that since the slaveholders'
rebellion had been crushed and “the supremacy of the United
States Government has been maintained by the combined forces
of the black and white soldiers on many bloody battlefields,”
therefore it was “Resolved, That we, the colored citizens of
Petersburg, Virginia, and true and loyal citizens of the United
States of America, claim, as an unqualified right, the privilege
of setting forth respectfully our grievances and demanding an
equality of rights under the law.”

At Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, Olustee, Fort Wagner,
Petersburg and Richmond, “we have,” said these Negroes, “vin-
dicated our rights, and this was but a continuation of the
services rendered the republic by our ancestors at Valley Forge
and at New Orleans.” On no proper ground could their dis-
franchisement because of color be sustained, and they demanded
the “right to the ballot-box ... the right of representation.”

All and sundry were assured that “the allegation made against
us that we understand Freedom to mean idleness and indolence”

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was worthy of but “scorn and contempt/' No, freedom meant
the “enjoyment of the legitimate fruits" of industry and upon
that they would insist. Feelings of resentment were held against
no man, and they would, concluded the resolutions, “treat all
persons with kindness and respect who shall treat us likewise." 19

Note has already been taken that all was not well with the
Negroes of Richmond, and that a former ardent secessionist had
been elected mayor of their city. Those Negroes by no means
remained passive in the face of this; indeed, the fact is that they
forced the mayor's removal from office.

The sequence of events was as follows: During the first week
in June, the man who had been Mayor of Richmond throughout
the course of the Civil War was returned to that office together
with the entire old police force. The Army's Provost-Marshal
for the area, General Patrick, ordered the institution of a pass
system, and every Negro was required to have on his person,
at all times, such a pass signed by his employer, or otherwise to
be liable to seizure and forced labor. And to cap the series of
indignities, the area commander, General Gregg, issued an order
declaring that Negroes were to “have all the rights at present
that free people of color have heretofore had in Virginia, and
no more"; that is to say, this was an order reinstituting all the
severe disabilities under which free Negroes had suffered during
the slave era. One of the results of these actions was the closing
of the recently established schools for Negroes.

On June 7 many Negroes of Richmond met, despite the police
terror, and drew up “An Appeal from the Richmond Negroes for
Protection" which was forwarded to Horace Greeley and printed
by him in full in his New York Tribune five days later. This
document reported many of the above-mentioned facts and
demanded the end of police brutality. 20

On June 8 several Negroes met at the home of one Peter
Matthews “for the purpose of taking some action in relation
to the persecutions of the colored people by the military and
police authorities." A committee of four, consisting of Fields
Cook, Peter Woolfolk, Nelson Hamilton, and Walter Snead,
was appointed in order to investigate specific complaints. For
two days these four men so occupied themselves, and on the
evening of June 10, at another meeting, they presented a detailed

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 1 47

report. Here another committee was appointed and charged
by the assemblage with the responsibility of preparing a full
statement of the facts and presenting this statement, in the form
of an address, to the President of the United States.

That same evening this committee, consisting of the four
Negroes last enumerated plus Richard Wells, William William-
son, and T. Morris Chester (Chester was a Negro visiting Rich-
mond in his capacity as a correspondent for the Philadelphia
Press , and had himself met rough handling from the police),
drew up a statement as directed, and in the morning of June 16,
they were received by President Johnson. By this time, and due
to this pressure, the Governor of Virginia had already ordered
the removal of the offensive Mayor.

The delegation informed the President that they represented
“a population of more than 20,000 colored people, including
Richmond and Manchester," and that while most of them were
poor, there nevertheless were “at least 2,000 men who are worth
from $200 to $500; 200 who have property valued at $1,000 to
$5,000, and a number who are worth from $5,000 to $20,000."
None was in the alms-house “and when we were slaves the aged
and infirm who were turned away from the homes of hard
masters, who had been enriched by their toil, our benevolent
societies supported while they lived, and buried when they died."
While during slavery education was legally forbidden us, never-
theless, “3,000 of us can read, and at least 2,000 can read and
write, and a large number of us are engaged in useful and profit-
able employment on our own account."

During the slaveholders' rebellion we prayed for the Union
and we gave “aid and comfort to the soldiers of Freedom (for
which several of our people, of both sexes, have been severely
punished by stripes and imprisonment). We have been their
pilots and their scouts and have safely conducted them through
many perilous adventures, while hard-fought battles and bloody
fields have fully established the indomitable bravery, the loyalty
and the heroic patriotism of our race." And what do we find?
The old system of laws reinstituted, the Confederate mayor and
the police force of Secessia back in office, a pass system initiated,
political power in the hands of the former masters, violence,
terror, peonage everywhere. We ask, Mr. President, said these

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Negroes, "your protection, and upon the loyalty of our hearts
and the power of our arms you may ever rely with unbounded
confidence.” In conclusion, they begged to be permitted to "re-
spectfully remind your Excellency of that sublime motto once
inscribed over the portals of an Egyptian temple: Know all ye
who exercise power, that God hates injustice !”

In the course of the conference the President was able to
announce the receipt of a dispatch stating that the odious pass
system had been abolished and the Negro schools reopened,
while he assured the delegation that an investigation, super-
vised by Major-General Oliver O. Howard, was then in progress. 21

The fact is that on June 23 the newly-appointed commander
of the Department of Virginia, Major-General Terry, issued a
general order providing for the termination of all special laws
applicable only to Negroes, 22 while on October 25, the Richmond
City Council adopted “An Ordinance Repealing all Ordinances
or parts of Ordinances Relating to Negroes or Negro Slaves.” 23

The Negroes of Vicksburg, Mississippi, held a mass meeting
on June 19, with a soldier, Jacob Richardson of the 49th United
States Colored Infantry, presiding "to discuss the question of
civil rights of the colored citizens of Mississippi, and take measures
to secure them.” A committee of five was selected to draft appro-
priate resolutions, and while this was being done, the Reverend
G. G. Edwards spoke on the needs of the Negro soldier and
civilian. The resolutions were then reported, considered, and
adopted with no dissenting voice. They protested President
Johnson’s actions in setting up a provisional government which
ignored them, and in calling for a Constitutional Convention to
be elected by that portion of the population which had had the
vote prior to secession. They decided, too, to “earnestly appeal
to Congress, that the State of Mississippi be not restored to
Federal relations unless by her constitution she shall enfranchise
her loyal colored citizens,” and urged the “establishment of a
paper within the State that will fearlessly and faithfully defend
the rights of the colored citizens.” 24

The 1865 Constitutional Convention of Mississippi was com-
posed of sympathizers with slavery and the instrument they
produced envisaged the Negroes as a politically impotent and
economically exploitable element of the population. Again the

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 149

Vicksburg Negroes convened, on September 18, to protest against
this document and to issue this prophetic warning:

“That it is our firm conviction, and we hereby put it on record, that
should Mississippi be restored to her status in the Union under her
amended constitution as it now stands, that her Legislature, under
pretext of guarding the interests of the State from the evils of sudden
emancipation, will pass such proscriptive class laws against the freedmen
as will result in their expatriation from the State or their practical
reenslavement .’’ 28

Meanwhile, the month of August had seen at least two state-
wide Negro conventions and several local ones. On the seventh,
the Tennessee State Convention of Negroes that had been in
preparation since April commenced its deliberations— which were
to consume four days-at the Nashville African Methodist Episco-
pal Church. Present were one hundred and sixty-five delegates
from all sections of the state, and the church “was filled to over-
flowing” throughout the proceedings by guests and visitors.

This convention condemned the state legislature for ignoring
the repeated petitions of the Negro people for full citizenship
rights and appealed to the people of Tennessee and of the nation
to grant them justice. Resolutions were prepared for presenta-
tion, in petition form, before the United States Congress, and
these were so presented by Senator Charles Sumner in December.
Here “the colored people of Tennessee [did] respectfully and
solemnly protest against the congressional delegation from this
state being admitted to seats in your honorable bodies until
the Legislature of this State enacts such laws as shall secure to
us our rights as freemen.” The document continued:

We cannot believe that the General Government will allow us to be
left without such protection after knowing, as you do, what services we
have rendered to the cause of the preservation of the Union and the
maintenance of the laws. We have respectfully petitioned our Legis-
lature upon the subject, and have failed to get them to do anything for
us. saying that it was premature to legislate for the protection of our
rights.

We think it premature to admit such delegation. It is true we have
no vote, but we nevertheless desire and will do anything we can to
support the government.

We deem it unnecessary to attempt to make an argument in favor

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of our protest, believing, as we do, the justice of our cause to be a far
better argument than we could make; yet it may not be amiss to say
that, inasmuch as the United States Constitution guarantees to every
State in the Union a republican form of government, we are at a loss
to understand that to be a republican government which does not pro-
tect the rights of all citizens, irrespective of color.

Being impressed with these convictions, we cannot refrain from ap-
pealing to your honorable and dignified assembly, entertaining the hope
that we will be heard and our cause considered.

The Government did not forget to call for our help, and now we
think that we have a right to call upon it. 20

A statewide Virginia Negro convention assembled in Alex-
andria on August 2. Fifty delegates from seven cities and eleven
counties were present. The spirit and purpose of this convention
may be observed by citing brief and typical excerpts from the
remarks of participants: Peter R. Jones of Petersburg: “We
have had enough of war; but we will have our rights"; a Mr.
Kneeland: “We ask only for what constitutes a man. If we
cannot do it by words, we can do it by actions"; the Rev. Nicholas
Richmond of Charlottesville: “We will contend to the last for
our rights/* 27

At the same time regional meetings were being held elsewhere
in Virginia in response to particular circumstances. In Rich-
mond, for example, violent attacks upon Negro men and women,
particularly by Federal troops, provoked the Negro community
to petition General Terry to offer them protection, or, if he felt
“unable to afford it," to permit them “the privilege of protecting
ourselves/* 28

Around Hampton, Virginia, between four and five thousand
Negroes had settled during the war on farm land abandoned by
secessionists. By the summer of 1865, under Johnsonian restora-
tion, many of the now pardoned owners were coming back and
demanding the return of the land for their own use. On August
21, the Negroes of this area, in convention, appealed to the
authorities to allow them to remain in occupation of the land
which, they declared, had never been so productive. They
pledged to one another resistance to the owners* claims. Shortly
thereafter force was used against these Negroes, a detachment of
Federal cavalry being employed in suppressing an alleged riot.

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 1 5 1

Twenty-one leaders said to have been “armed with revolvers,
cutlasses, carbines, shotguns" were captured . 20

Indicative of another method of attack upon the vital ques-
tion of the land was the action taken by a group of Negroes of
Lenoir County, North Carolina, in August. They formed them-
selves “into a society to purchase homes by joint stock** with
the object of raising $10,000 by the close of 1867, the plan being
for two hundred and fifty subscribers to pay, within the year,
the sum of forty-eight dollars. 30

Reference has already been made to the organizing activities
of North Carolina Negroes during the spring and summer of
1865. Late in August these culminated in a call for “A Conven-
tion of the Colored Citizens of North Carolina." This was issued
by a committee of three, A. H. Galloway, John Randolph, Jr.,
and George W. Price, appointed for this purpose by a mass
meeting held in Wilmington.

Let the leading men of each separate district issue a call for a meeting
[said this document] that delegates may be chosen to express the
sentiments of the Freedmen at Raleigh on the 29th of September, and
let each county send as many delegates as it has representatives in the
Legislature. Rally, old men, we want the counsel of your years and
experience; rally, young men, we want your loyal presence, and need
the ardor of youth to stimulate the timid; and may the spirit of our
God come with the people to hallow all our sittings and wisely direct
all our actions. 31

Following this came local meetings held throughout the State.
Typical of such preparatory meetings were those held in Septem-
ber in Raleigh and Wilmington. During the first week the
Negroes of Raleigh met and elected a committee of three to
prepare the physical facilities for the statewide convention. A
hall sufficient to seat a minimum of five hundred people was
obtained, housing arrangements for that number were made, and
hundreds of circulars were issued for distribution in Wake
County calling for attendance at a local mass meeting. The
latter was held on the ninth and delegates to the State Conven-
tion were selected. 32

Similar activities must have been occurring in Wilmingtoi
for on the 21st, to quote the headline in the local press, th
Negroes held a “Large Mass Meeting at the City Hall. Accorc

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ing to this paper, “The affair reflected great credit upon the
freedmen, and the orderly, dignified, and attentive disposition
shown among them was well worthy of emulation. 0 Most atten-
tion was focused upon the address delivered by John P. Samp
son, a native of Wilmington, who was then editing the weekly
Colored Citizen of Cincinnati.

Mr. Sampson, reading from a carefully prepared paper, an-
nounced, “We ask for the immediate, unconditional, and uni-
versal enfranchisement of the black man in every state in this
union. We claim that without this his liberty is a mockery. . . .
The American people are now in tears, 0 he went on. “The Shen-
andoah has run blood ... we feel ... a disposition to learn
righteousness. . . . Now is the time to press this right. 0 He con-
cluded that “the charge of inferiority is an old dodge, 0 used by
all conquerors and exploiters to justify and rationalize their
inhuman activities, and that the Negro people knew it to be a
sham and a lie. 33

There is evidence that violence was used to prevent the hold-
ing of such open meetings in some other parts of North Carolina.
Thus, for example, a gathering of Negroes at Chapel Hill was
attacked and forcibly disbanded. 84 Again, the Raleigh corre-
spondent of the New York Tribune, in reporting the first day's
meeting of the State Convention, said that about one hundred
and fifty delegates “who were appointed by meetings and in
formal bodies of the free people 0 were present, and that while
some brought credentials establishing their representative char-
acter, “others had as much as they could do to bring themselves
having to escape from their homes stealthily by night, and walk
long distances, so as to avoid observation, such was the opposition
manifested to the movement in some localities. 085

There seems, also, to have been some opposition from conser-
vative Negro elements in Raleigh to holding a convention there,
particularly since its sitting was to coincide with that of the
official State Constitutional Convention. Nevertheless, it was
held, was well attended, widely reported, and attracted national
attention. Its deliberations commenced on September 29 and
concluded on October 3, and its essential character was expressed
most clearly by the opening address of the chairman, the Rev-

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 153

erend John W. Hood, of New Bern, and by the memorial pre-
sented to the Constitutional Convention. 86

In both documents, and particularly in the memorial, a strain
of conservatism and compromise was present that appears to have
been quite unusual for the period. The chairman felt that “there
has never been and never will be a more important assembly than
this now convened here. 0 Their slogan was “equal rights before
the law,° but “all harsh expressions toward anybody or about
any line of policy 0 were to be avoided. The ideas of migration
and colonization were nonsense so far as the mass of southern
Negroes was concerned, and thus some mode of joint living—
Negro and white— had to be contrived. In this connection, “if
we respect ourselves we shall be respected, 0 and, he concluded:

I think the best way to prepare a people for the exercise of their
rights is to put them in practice of those rights, and so I think the
time has come when we should be given ours; but I am well aware
that we shall not gain them all at once. Let us have faith, patience,
and moderation, yet assert always that we want these things— first,
the right to give evidence in the courts; second, the right to be repre-
sented in the jury box; and, third, the right to put votes in the ballot
box. These rights we want, these rights we contend for, and these
rights, under God, we must ultimately have 37

The demand for civil and political rights as urged in the
above address does not appear in the memorial. The appeal is
rather “for protection and sympathy’ which it is hoped might
be merited “by our industry, sobriety and respectful demeanor.”
Still certain specific enactments were requested. It was asked
“that some suitable measures” might be adopted to forestall
“unscrupulous and avaricious masters” from practicing physical
cruelty, or from withholding wages. Education, of an unspeci-
fied nature, was desired, as well as protection of the sanctity
of our family relations.” Public care of the helpless and infirm
and state assistance for “the reunion of families which have been
long broken up by war, or by the operations of Slavery were
advocated. And, “finally, praying for such encouragement to
our industry as the proper regulation of the hours of labor, and
the providing the means of protection of our property and of
our persons against rapacious and cruel employers, and for the

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collection of just claims, we commit our cause into your hands "as
The conservative quality of this memorial evoked favorable
comments from the local press.** It was submitted by Governor
Holden to the Constitutional Convention, read to that body by
its clerk, "and was listened to with respectful attention.” It was
referred to a special committee of five for consideration, the
chairman of which, in reporting back, recommended no action.
According to him, the Nep-oes were ignorant, legislation would
accomplish nothing, and time alone was the healer. It was neces-
sary to aim at “material and moral welfare, and to the general
peace and prosperity of the State [rather] than to any theoretical
schemes of social and political equality." Perhaps, concluded
the report, it would be well to appoint another committee to
further study the question. 40

The month of September marks the appearance of another
type of concerted activity among southern Negroes of great
interest— namely, labor strikes.

On the morning of September 4, Negro stevedores and dock
laborers at Savannah, Georgia, struck, demanding, according to
the local press, wages of $2.00 per day instead of $1.50. Federal
troops were used to crush the strike by arresting the leaders.
The arrests exerted a salutary influence on the balance of the
strikers, the Savannah Republican reported the next day, “who
speedily dispersed when they witnessed the fate of their foolish
leaders." 41

Two weeks later the owners of tobacco-processing plants in
Richmond were presented with the following petition from
their Negro workers:

Richmond, September 18, 1865
Dear Sirs: We the Tobacco mechanicks of this city and Manchester
is worked to great disadvantage. In 1858 and 1859 our masters hiered
us to the Tobacconist at a prices ranging from $150 to 180. The To-
bacconist furnished us lodging food & clothing. They gave us tasks to
performs, all we made over this task they payed us for. We worked faith-
ful and they paid us faithful. They Then gave us $2 to 2.50 cts, and we
made double the amount we now make. The Tobacconist held a meet-
ing, and resolved not give more than $1.50 cts per hundred, which is
about one days work — in a week we make 600 lbs apece with a sterner.
The weeks work then at $1.50 amounts to $9 — the stemers wages is
from $4 to $4.50cts which leaves from $5 to 4.50cts per week about one

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 155

half what we made when slaves. Now to Rent two small rooms we have
to pay from $18 to 20. We see $4.50cts or $5 will not more then pay
Rent say nothing about food Clothing medicin Doctor Bills Tax 8 c co.
They say we will starve through laziness that is not so. But it is true
we will starve at our present wages. They say we will steal we can say
for ourselves we had rather work for our living, give us a Chance. We
are compeled to work for them at low wages and pay high Rents and
make $5 per week and sometimes les. And paying $18 or 20 per month
Rent. It is impossible to feed ourselves and family — starvation is cirten
unless a change is brought about. Tobacco Factory Mechanicks of
Richmond and Manchester . 42

Somewhat later this year the Mayor of New Orleans told a
visitor that he was delighted with the free-labor system. He went
on to remark:

I thought it an indication of progress when the white laborers and
negroes on the levees the other day made a strike for higher wages.
They were receiving two dollars and a half and three dollars a day,
and they struck for five and seven dollars. They marched up the levee
in a long procession, white and black together. I gave orders that they
should not be interfered with as long as they interfered with nobody
else; but when they undertook by force to prevent other laborers from
working, the police promptly put a stop to their proceedings 43

The greatest strike movement, however, of southern Negroes,
beginning in the year of 1865, came from the great bulk of those
whose lives had been, and were to continue to be, tied up with
the cultivation of the land. This whole epic story merits a volume
of its own, and here we must content ourselves with a few
assertions.

Among these millions the following courses of action pre-
dominated in the first post-war year: (1) attempts to retain
possession or, at least, occupation of lands abandoned by Seces-
sionists; (2) wholesale flight to urban areas, particularly Wash-
ington, Richmond, Raleigh, Norfolk, Charleston, and New
Orleans; (3) attempts to purchase or rent lands; (4) absolute
refusal to enter into verbal agreements, and extreme hesitancy
in signing contracts with members of the former master class,
particularly where sharecropping was involved; (5) militant
resistance, in a physical sense, to the introduction of peonage. 44

Continuing the chronicle of the formal organizational activity

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of the southern Negro and returning to the month of September
we find ourselves turning to Louisiana. There, as the press
reported, "The colored people ... are taking an orderly and
practical method of testing their claims to citizenship.” They
were conducting their own registration of all individuals they
considered qualified voters with the idea of having this electorate
select delegates to a State Convention which, in turn, was to
designate candidates for Congress. The Negroes were said to
feel "that if Louisiana is to be recognized the loyal citizens con-
stitute the State, and are entitled to recognition.” Since the
alleged state authorities denied them the suffrage they proposed
“to ask Congress whether it prefers that loyal blacks or disloyal
whites should control Louisiana.” 48

The Negroes of Mississippi were active, too. Reference has
already been made to the Vicksburg mass meeting of September
18. Shortly thereafter, finding open meetings no longer possible,
a committee of Negroes was delegated to present a petition to
the Congress of the United States, and this was done, through
Senator Sumner, in January, 1866. In this document the men
from Mississippi requested the basic right of suffrage because,
as we have fought in favor of liberty, justice and humanity, we
wish to vote in favor of it . . . and also that we may be in a
position in a legal and peaceable way to protect ourselves in
the enjoyment of those sacred rights which were pledged to us
by the emancipation proclamation.” 46

Since the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina was
to assemble on September 13, there was a great deal of activity
among the Negroes of that state who were intent upon getting
their views before that body. Thus, the Columbia, S. C., Daily
Phoenix, a paper certainly not friendly to the efforts of the Negro
to complete and make real his freedom, reported the gathering,
on September 4, of “a large meeting of freedmen, held on St.
Helena Island. Here resolutions were adopted urging the
members of the convention to grant the vote to the Negro as
well as to the white. It was asserted that both justice and policy
required this, and these Negroes assured everyone "that we will
never cease our efforts to obtain, by all just and legal means, a
full recognition of our rights as citizens of the United States and
of this Commonwealth.” 47

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES 157

Somewhat later the same month one hundred and three
Negroes of Charleston assembled, drafted, signed, and forwarded
to the same body a lengthy petition the essential prayer of which
was that suffrage be extended to the Negro. The constitution-
makers were informed “that nothing short of this, our respectful
demand, will satisfy our people" and while the petitioners recog-
nized "what prejudices and preconceived opinions must be over-
come before our prayers can be granted” they hoped the recipients
would be “capable of rising superior to the prejudices of habit
and education.” The hope was vain, however, for the Conven-
tion resolved, on September 27, "that the petition be laid on
the table," and the clerk was careful to write on the back of the
manuscript: "Note this Petition was not read in Convention.” 48

Having failed to move the convention, there remained the
state legislature, the American Congress, and the people of the
nation at large, to whom appeals might be made. For these
purposes a “Colored People’s Convention of the State of South
Carolina” met at the Zion Church in Charleston from November
20-25. Delegates were present from the entire state including
Columbia, Chester, Greenville, Kershaw, Beaufort, Richland,
Sumter, Winyah, Orangeburg, and John’s Island, and the sense
of the convention was expressed in four public documents. These
included a "Declaration of Rights and Wrongs,” an "Address
to the White Inhabitants of South Carolina,” a "Petition to
the State Legislature,” and a “Memorial to Congress.”

Summarizing one will give the spirit, and very largely the
content, of all and for this purpose we choose the “Memorial.”
This paper begins by expressing joy and gratitude because of
the destruction of chattel slavery and the efforts of the Freed-
men’s Bureau. It asserts a consciousness “of the difficulties that
surround our condition” wherefore no right or privilege would
be demanded except "such as rest upon the strong basis of justice
and expediency, in view of the best interests of our entire coun-
try.” These demands were, in the order of presentation, “that
the strong arm of law and order be placed alike over the entire
people of this State: that life and property be secure, and the
laborer as free to sell his labor as the merchant his goods; that
a fair and impartial construction be given to the pledges of gov-
ernment to us concerning the land question"; security for “the

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school, the pulpit, the press”; the right to vote; the right to be
on juries; the right to bear arms; the end to Black Codes; the
right of assembly; the “right to enter upon all avenues of trade,
commerce, agriculture, to amass wealth by thrift and industry*';
and finally, “the right to develop our whole being, by all the
appliances that belong to civilized society. . . .”

In the address to the white people of South Carolina one addi-
tional note of considerable interest appears. This declares that:

It is some consolation to know, and it inspires us with hope when
we reflect, that our cause is not alone the cause of four millions of black
men in this country, but we are intensely alive to the fact that it is also
the cause of millions of oppressed men in other “parts of God’s beautiful
earth,” who are now struggling to be free in the fullest sense of the
word, and God and nature are pledged to their triumph. 49

Some indication has already been given of the deep desire of
the Southern Negro to possess land. 50 This appeared, once again,
in organized form among Negro settlers on Edisto Island, South
Carolina, towards the end of October. At that time they were
visited by Major-General Oliver O. Howard who came as the
President's personal representative to inform those Negroes that
the former rebel land-owners had been pardoned and were claim-
ing their property. Among other people present at this scene
was a New England lady, serving as a teacher in the area. She
recorded that “At first the people could not understand, but as
the meaning struck them, that they must give up their little
homes and gardens and work them again for others, there was
a general murmur of dissatisfaction.” The General proposed that
a committee of three be selected to consult together and report
to him.

During this interval the visitors asked for songs. The Negroes
responded with, “Nobody knows the trouble I see” and “Wander-
ing in the wilderness of sorrow and gloom.” Two of the largest
landholders had accompanied the general and spoke with some
of the Negroes, but these asserted they would not work “for the
Seces.” The former slaveholders were told that they were for-
given for past evils but, said one Negro of himself, “he had lived
all his life with a basket over his head, and now that it had been
taken off and air and sunlight had come to him, he could not
consent to have the basket over him.”

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159

Sometime later the committee of three appeared but informed
the general that his news had distressed them so that “they were
too much shaken to see things clearly” and requested more time.
This was granted, and a few days thereafter they presented the
general with the following petition for the President of the
United States:

Dear President Johnson of the United States

Wee the freedmen of South Carolina wish to adress you with a few
lines Conserning the sad feelings that is now resting upon our minds
wee pray that god may guive you helth & good spirets that when you re-
ceive theas few notasis that you may receive them as the father did the
prodical son wee have for the last four years ben studing with justis
and the best of our ability what step wee should take to become a peple:
we have lernt to respect all Just Causes that ever came from the union.

Mag genrl howard has paid the freedmen of South Carolinah a visit &
caled a meating on Edisto Island South Carliner in the Centrel part of
the island at the priskple Church thair hee beutifly addressed the freed-
men of this island after his adress a grate many of the people under-
standing what was said they got aroused & awoke to perfect sense to
stody for them Selves what part of this law would rest against us, we
said in rafarence to what he said that nothing did apier at that time
to bee very opressing upon us but the one thing that is wee freedmen
should work for wages for our former oners or eny other man president
Johnson of u st I do say . . . man that have stud upon the feal of battle
& have shot their master & sons now Going to ask ether one for bread or
for shelter or Comfortable for his wife 8: children sunch a thing the u st
should not aught to Expect a man [to do] ... the King of south Caro-
lina [i.e., one of the former slaveholders] ask the Privalage to have the
stage that he might a Dress the ordinance [audience] of the freedmen
. . . [the] old master [claimed] such a fealing to Comply with the best
order & also what was best for the freedmen. . . [We said to him] Here
is Plenty Whidow & Fatherles that have serve you as slave now losen a
home . . . give Each one of them a acres & a i/ 2 to a family as you has the
labers 8c the Profet of there Yearly [early] Youth . . . [when] the ques-
tion was asked him by General Howard, what would it sell your lan
for a acres his anser the I would not take a hundred 5 100 of a acres
that is a part of his union fealing so then we therefore lose fate in this
southern Gentleman . . . [They beseech] the wise presidon that sets on
his seat [to give them] a Chance to Recover out of this trubble .
these 3 Committee has Pleg the Trouth to you dis day. Oct. 25, 1865“

Meanwhile on October 2, a mass meeting of Missouri Negroes

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had assembled in St. Louis, denounced discrimination and Jim-
Crowism, and appointed a State Executive Committee of eight
to issue a public statement informing the country of their senti-
ments. Ten days later “An Address by the Colored People of
Missouri to the Friends of Equal Rights" was written and ap-
peared in pamphlet form later that year. This address reminded
its readers that the Negro people were loyal fighters for freedom,
and declared that they resented and repudiated any type of
wardship. They demanded full equality: “We ask for a citizen-
ship so broad and solid that upon it black men, white men and
every American born can equally, safely and eternally stand. 52
The closing weeks of 1865 witnessed no decline in the organ-
ized activities of southern Negroes. General Rufus Saxton, who
had been in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau for the state of
South Carolina from June, 1865, until January, 1866 (when he
was removed, according to his own testimony, because of the
pressure exerted upon the amenable Johnson administration by
large plantation owners), 53 brought with him to Washington
“a petition signed by several hundred freedmen [of South Caro-
lina] asking that they may be allowed the rights of citizenship."
The general was asked by a member of Congress whether or
not he thought the Negro people would ever acquiesce in or
“submit quietly" to a subordinate role. No, he did not. He based
this upon “conversation with intelligent freedmen, men of
thought and intelligence, who have told me so, and it is the
result of all my experience of nearly four years with those
people." Some, he said, were arming themselves. He, himself,
had counseled patience and reliance upon the acts and good
faith of the Federal government and this had, in his opinion,
helped restrain them. But, he went on:

I will tell you what the leader of the colored Union league and other
colored men in Charleston said to me: they said that they feared they
could not much longer control the freedmen if I left Charleston. I do
not recollect their exact words, but the substance was, that they feared
the freedmen would attempt to take their cause in their own hands. 54

At least three state conventions of Negro people were held in
December, one in Little Rock, Arkansas, another in Baltimore,
Maryland, and the third in Florida. In all three the basic de-

ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES l6l

mand was for full citizenship rights. Of the Arkansas meeting,
a judge of that state's Supreme Court testified in February, 1866,
that he had been present and “was very much astonished listen-
ing to their proceedings . . . altogether they made a much better
show than I supposed a body of negroes in that State could do." 55
The Maryland convention was held at the recently opened Fred-
erick Douglass Institute in Baltimore and was attended by “155
regularly appointed delegates . . . from every part of the
State. . . ." 56 One of the actions of this gathering was to appoint
Lewis H. Douglass and William E. Matthews as representatives,
or lobbyists, for Maryland Negroes in Washington. The Florida
convention asked for land and education as well as the suf-
frage. 57

Mass meetings held by Negroes in several cities of Virginia
in December also resulted in electing and dispatching repre-
sentatives, Negro and white, to urge their cause at the nation's
capital. Typical of these meetings was that held in Norfolk, on
the first. Here the Negroes denounced as slanders the rumors
that they were planning an insurrection. These rumors, it was
declared, were “vile falsehoods designed to provoke acts of
unlawful violence against us," and a committee was appointed
“to wait upon the military and civil authorities and co-operate
with them in exposing those slanders and defeating the machina-
tion of still rebels and traitors and in allaying the fears of the
timid and credulous." 58

It was once again announced by the Negroes that they would
“not cease to importune and to labor in all lawful and proper
ways for equal rights as citizens" until these were granted. The
committee of lobbyists for Washington— consisting of three Ne-
groes, Dr. Thomas Bayne, the Rev. J. M. Brown, and E. W.
Williams, and the white attorney, Calvin Pepper— were directed
to work for the obtaining of full political and judicial rights,
the power to elect local agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, the
reduction of rents, the halting of the return of confiscated land,
“and to attend to all other matters . . . pertaining to the interests
of our people . . . and for this purpose they are to cooperate and
act in harmony and unity with similar committees and delega-
tions from this and other States." The delegation was urged par-
ticularly to oppose the recognition of the existing state govern-

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ment and the seating by Congress of those claiming admission
who had been elected by a suffrage confined only to whites. In
the following days similar meetings were held in Elizabeth
City, Yorktown, Hampton, Old Point, Williamsburg and Ports-
mouth, and several more Negroes plus another white man joined
Virginia's unofficial delegation to Washington. 69

To recapitulate the salient features of the evidence: In 1865,
southern Negroes rejected ideas of colonization or flight, wel-
comed the support of white allies, and protested vehemently
against unfair labor practices, violence, peonage, and restric-
tions upon land ownership. They struggled to achieve the right
to vote, to testify in courts, to serve on juries, to own land, to
obtain a formal education, to bear arms, to better wages, and
to eliminate all invidious distinctions based upon color.

MISSISSIPPI RECONSTRUCTION
AND THE NEGRO LEADER,

CHARLES CALDWELL

Charles Caldwell’s story deserves to be known. In telling it
one must tell the story of the post-Civil War decade in Missis-
sippi because his career is inextricably interwoven within the
rich fabric of Reconstruction history. His name has appeared but
rarely in books and then only in terms of execration: "a negro
of desperate character"; "one of the most daring and desperate
negroes of the day”; "a notorious and turbulent negro.” 1

Charles Caldwell lived all the days of his life-except his last
ten years— as a slave and the anonymity that covered most such
lives covered his, too. We know not even when or where he was
bom, but as an adult he lived in the village of Clinton, some
dozen miles from Jackson, in Hinds County, Mississippi, worked
as a blacksmith and had a son whom he called Charles, Jr. 2

There is no direct evidence as to what this particular Negro
did or thought or said in the years 1865 and 1866. But what
years those were for Mississippi’s half million Negroes! 3 In May,
1865 the last of the disheartened and whipped troops of the
defunct Confederacy had surrendered. In the big houses— those
not abandoned and empty— were foreboding and deep despair;
in the huts were rejoicing and ecstatic hope.

As a consequence of the war over two billions of dollars of
capital -of constitutionally recognized private property -had
been wiped out (some $300,000,000 in Mississippi alone) and
with it went the traditional foundation of the Old South s social
order. What was to replace it? Who was to determine and dom-
inate the new order, and how new was it to be?

Those who had ruled were determined that the changes
would be as few and as superficial as possible. One of the most
astute among them-James Lusk Alcorn-who had owned some
one hundred slaves and an estate worth $250,000, had been a

163

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state representative and senator for a decade and a Confederate
brigadier-general, and was to be, in his role of vitiating radical-
ism by attaching himself to it, a Reconstruction governor and
United States senator— wrote to his wife as early as May 16
1865:

We will now take the oath to support the Constitution and laws of
the United States; elect our senators and representatives; claim that we
have our slaves until slavery is abolished and upon the question of
amending the constitution for its prohibition Mississippi has a vote.* *

And the President was with them. As Provisional Governor
of Mississippi he appointed, on June 13, 1865, the former slave-
holding anti-secessionist, William L. Sharkey, who from the start
of his political career in 1828 had been one of the most impor-
tant cogs in the apparatus of slavocratic rule, serving for nine-
teen years (1832-1851) as chief justice of the state’s highest
court. 6 This individual did the following: First, he provided for
the election, early in August, of delegates to a Constitutional
Convention, with the electorate restricted to those who had had
the vote in January, 1861, and had taken the President’s loyalty
oath. Second, he reappointed all local officials who had been
functioning under the Confederacy, requiring again only the
taking of the same oath. 6 Third, he urged President Johnson
to remove all Federal troops— the vast majority, Negroes-from
the state.' And, lastly, he ordered— without even informing the
Federal commander-the formation of a state militia to be made
up of white men only and particularly, said Governor Sharkey,
of those young men of the State who have so distinguished

• Alcorn topped a devious career by serving as one of the two Republicans
in the 1890 Bourbon constitutional convention and voting there to dis-
franchise the Negro people. He was typical of many wealthy Southern
planters — mostly pre-Civil War Whigs — who joined the Reconstruction
Republicans or advocated cooperation with the Negroes in order to prevent
fundamental change. See D. H. Donald, “The Scalawag in Mississippi
Reconstruction/* in the Journal of Southern History (1944) , X, pp. 447-60;
and note the testimony of Josiah A. Campbell, a top Bourbon politician
and one of the 49 signers of the Confederate constitution, in the Boutwell
Report , p. 937, where he admitted his object in forming “an alliance with
the negroes politically . . . [was to] acquire ascendancy over them, and
become their teachers and controllers . . . /*

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 165

themselves for gallantry/' i.e., in the war against the United
States, then but three months terminated!*

The election was held as scheduled and the political com-
plexion of the approximately one hundred delegates was what
one would expect: Seventy were old-line Whigs; eighteen were
Democrats, that is, somewhat to the right of the majority; and
nine were Conservatives— so much to the right of the majority
as to tend to deny the termination of secession. 8 This constitu-
tional convention, with the haste typical of the entire reactionary
maneuver met August 14 and adjourned ten days later. In that
time it accomplished this: After prolonged debate it was agreed
that simply announcing Mississippi's ordinance of secession as
null and void would cast the least aspersions upon those respon-
sible for it. Following considerable argument it was decided to
acknowledge the end of slavery in the State by merely asserting
that “the institution , . . was destroyed" thus once again per-
mitting no derogatory remarks (though even this found eleven
members in opposition); 9 and, finally, provision was made for
the election of local officers and a state legislature in October, the
electorate being identical with that which had created the con-
vention. Just in case anyone was so dull as not to have compre-
hended the essential function of this coming legislature that

• This militia order was too much even for the Federal commander,
Major-General Slocum, politically sympathetic though he was to Johnson
and to Sharkey. He therefore countermanded it, but told General Sherman:
“I did not like to take this step; but Sharkey should have consulted me
before issuing an order arming the rebels — and placing them on duty
with the darkies in every county of the State. I hope the U. S. Military
will soon be removed from the State, but until this is done it would
certainly be bad policy to arm the militia.” — dated Aug. 27, 1865 — In
Memoriam Henry Warner Slocum (Albany, 1904) , p. 105. President Johnson
ordered the General to rescind his own order and to allow Gov. Sharkey
to proceed with the forming of the militia, an act Carl Schurz believed
“the most unwarranted trick yet perpetrated at Washington.” — letter to
his wife. Sept. 2, 1865, in F. Bancroft, ed., Speeches , Correspondence and
Political Papers of Carl Schurz (6 vols., N. Y., 1913) I, p. 267.

General Slocum resigned in September to head the Democratic ticket in
the 1865 elections in New York. Before departing he was dined by the
gentry of Vicksburg and there toasted Sharkey as “a sound statesman and
true patriot. May he long be spared to the state he has served so well.*’
An analysis of the class allegiance and political affiliations of Array admin-
istrators after the Civil War — indeed, throughout American history — has
been almost completely ignored and with great damage to realistic histori-
ography.

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was spelled out for all the world to see: “. . . the Legislature at
its next session . . . shall provide by law for the protection and
security of the person and property of the freedmen of this
State, and guard them and the State against any evils that may
arise from their sudden emancipation.” 10

It has been observed that no direct evidence has been found
as to Charles Caldwell's feelings and actions while all this was
going on, but some record does exist concerning the Negro people
as a whole. Thus, on June 19, 1865, a mass meeting of Negroes
assembled in Vicksburg denounced Johnson's Provisional Gov-
ernment, protested against the meeting of a constitutional con-
vention in the election of whose delegates they would have no
voice and called upon Congress to refuse to restore Mississippi
to the Union until she had enfranchised “her loyal colored citi-
zens.” 11 And following the constitutional convention but pre-
ceding the elections of October the Negro people gathered again
in Vicksburg, reiterated their denunciation of Johnsonian Re-
construction, or, better, restoration, excoriated police brutality
and peonage and warned the nation that real liberation was
being thwarted. With perfect prescience they concluded:

That is our firm conviction and we hereby put it on record, that
should Mississippi be restored to her status in the Union under her
amended constitution as it now stands, that her Legislature, under pre-
text of guarding the interests of the State from the evils of sudden
emancipation, will pass such proscriptive class laws against the freed-
men as will result in their expatriation from the State or their practical
reenslavement. 12

Under the gratuitous prodding of an over-eager press demand-
ing “a well devised legislative system ... so stringent in character
as to compel the negroes to work as formerly, upon the planta-
tions . . . willingly if possible, but forcibly if need be” and that
the Negro “should remain a servant [and must not] have the
right to hold real estate conferred upon him,” 13 the legislature of
October-December 1865 met. With an ex-Confederate general as
Speaker of the House and an ex-Confederate colonel as president
of the Senate 14 the press's explicit directions were hardly needed,
for the actions of these gentlemen were so blatantly reactionary
as to be somewhat embarrassing to their more astute friends,
including President Johnson.

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 167

The legislature refused to ratify the thirteenth amendment;
it refused to even consider suffrage for the Negro no matter how
circumscribed or limited, and among its acts were a memorial to
the President begging him to free Jefferson Davis— “our blood
. . . our treasure”— and a joint resolution calling upon the same
official to remove all Federal troops from Mississippi. 15

And for the majority of Mississippi's inhabitants, for the Ne-
gro people, came their “practical reenslavement” in a law en-
titled “An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, and for
other purposes”! The civil rights are quickly enumerated: Ne-
groes might marry— among themselves; they might sue and be
sued; they might possess personal property. But enumerating the
“other purposes” takes a little longer. Negroes were forbidden
to own land, nor might they even “rent or lease lands or tene-
ments except in incorporated towns or cities.” Negroes were
required to carry written evidence of a lawful home and to have
a contract for labor. From this labor they were not to leave
“without good cause” under penalty of forfeiture of pay, a fine
of $100 as a vagrant and the necessity of working out this fine
in the employ of anyone who should pay it. No Negro might
carry arms, and the militia as previously organized by Governor
Sharkey was now provided for by law. Negro children, without
means of support, were to be apprenticed to white employers
(former masters being given priority) until reaching the age of
eighteen. 16

Once again the Negro people responded militantly. A dele-
gation was appointed to go to Washington and to present a
petition to Congress explaining precisely what was happening
in Mississippi. In January Senator Sumner of Massachusetts pre-
sented their document, demanding immediate enfranchisement
so that, said the Negroes, we might “protect ourselves in the
enjoyment of those sacred rights which were pledged to us by
the emancipation proclamation.” Shortly thereafter Senator Wade
of Ohio presented another petition, “very numerously signed,”
from Negro soldiers in Mississippi demanding the same right
for themselves and all of their people. 17

And the masses on the plantations responded too, for law or
no law, the planters, though possessing the land and thus having
the final word in terms of food— in terms of life and death—

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found it very difficult to get the Negroes to sign contracts. They
could not buy land, they could not rent land, yet many of them
insisted that they would not work except for wages— stipulated
regular monthly payments in cash.* Such a wage system made
possible some degree of independence, some degree of effective
struggle, and therefore many refused— let the planters do their
worst— to acquiesce in a sharecropping regime of semi-slavery.
This is the significant feature of the following passage from the
report of the United States Commissioner of Agriculture for
1867:

The payment of wages — a plan tried extensively in 1866 — generally
proved unprofitable, the freedmen being inclined to use too freely their
newly-found liberty, and planters were generally quite as little at home
in the management of free labor. Much of the labor was inefficient, and
idleness became contagious, of a more malignant type in proportion to
increase of numbers working together, crops were neglected, upbraiding
and threats sometimes followed, and the cotton-fields were in many cases
left in the lurch at the critical season of picking . is

Things had indeed come to a sorry state when Negro washer-
women in Mississippi's capital had the audacity, in June, 1866, of
actually threatening to strike unless higher pay were forth-
coming! 19

The planters, moreover, had moved too far, too fast, and too
brazenly. The North, still burying its dead, with Republican
supremacy by no means assured, with an economic modus vivendi
still to be formulated vis-a-vis the South, with the prodding of
the Negro people and their radical allies, called a halt. In
November, 1865, the military disallowed those acts of the legis-
lature forbidding Negroes to lease lands or bear arms. In March,
1866, Congress decided to seat no senator or representative from
an insurrectionary state until it had declared the state entitled
to representation, with the result that the individuals sent as

• In Mississippi, as throughout the South, the Negro’s desire for the
land was acute and his belief in an impending land distribution was
widespread. Contemporary sources are filled with this. To cite one witness
referring to this state in the summer of 1865, “. . . they ardently desire to
become freeholders. In the independent possession of landed property they
see the consummation of their deliverance ... it must be admitted that
this instinct is correct.” — Carl Schurz’s Report to the President, Senate Ex.
Doc. No. 2, 39th Cong, 1st Sess., p. 31.

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 1 69

senators from Mississippi, William L. Sharkey and James L.
Alcorn, were rejected. The next month the Civil Rights Law
was passed, over Johnson's veto, and this declared the freedmen
to be citizens and specifically endowed them with the civil rights
adhering to citizens, including the right to possess all kinds of
real and personal property. 20 In June Congress passed the Four-
teenth Amendment and started it on its way through the state
legislatures. That autumn the electorate presented the left wing
of the Republican Party with an overwhelming majority for the
ensuing Congress.*

Thus it came about that the new Congress enacted, in March,
1867, its Reconstruction legislation, the essential feature of which
was that ten of the southern states were to hold constitutional
conventions, the delegates to which were to be elected “by the
male citizens ... of whatever race, color, or previous condition."
The registration of these voters and the conduct of the polling
was to be administered and regulated under the supervision of
the United States Army. 21

In Mississippi registration continued for five months with a
total of almost 140,000 potential voters as the final result, of
whom 75,000 to 80,000 were Negro and 55,000 to 60,000 were
white. 22 These figures, which dismayed the Bourbons, were
reached despite some intimidation, and the enunciation of a

• There is, frequently, a profound distinction between the enunciation of
policy from the top and its actual execution in practice, especially when the
top levels themselves are split. Congress might legislate on Reconstruction
policy, but the President appointed most of the administrators of that
policy. Thus, for example, in Mississippi, the military commanders, Generals
Ord and Gillem— Johnson’s appointees— were not radical Reconstructionists,
the latter in particular being a personal friend of the President. We find,
then, that the 1865 legislature is allowed to reassemble late in 1866 and early
in 1867. In accord with congressional legislation it repealed the anti-land-
owning provisions of the Black Code and allow’ed Negroes to testify, but
not to serve as jurors. Most of the apprenticeship law of 1865 was repealed,
but a convict-leasing system was instituted. Laws of the State of Mississippi
at a Called Session . . . Oct., 1866 , and Jan. and Feb. 1867 (Jackson, 1867) ,
pp. 232, 443, 736. Perhaps the crowning act of these individuals was that in
which they adopted the report of one of their joint committees recommend-
ing that the legislature decline to ratify the 14th amendment, while “an
expression in the report that it was beneath the dignity of the State to
hold any communication with Secretary of State Seward on the subject
received special applause.” J. L. Power, “The Black and Tan Convention
in Proceedings of Mississippi Hist. Soc. (1900) , III, p. 76.

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policy of boycott— “masterly inactivity”— on the part of most of
the planters. 28 The vote itself, cast November 5, 1867, was over-
whelmingly pro-radical and pro-convention; out of a total of
about 76,000 voters, 69,739 favored a convention and 6,277
opposed.

We have already indicated that no direct evidence had been
found as to the opinions and activities of Charles Caldwell whose
career we proposed using as a spade with which to unearth some-
thing of Mississippi's— and the South's— history. But it is not
possible to doubt what those opinions and activities were for
he was among the sixteen Negro Republicans sent to the much
maligned “Black and Tan” constitutional convention of 1868.
Of the remaining eighty-four delegates— all of whom were white—
twenty-nine were Conservatives and fifty-five were Republicans,
of whom, incidentally, thirty-three were native-born South-
erners. 24

Ignoring provocations, the delegates assembled in Jackson on
January 7, 1868, and upon their deliberations there promptly
descended from the press a thick veil of silence which today is
almost impenetrable. 25 Yet the convention's journal exists and
while it is bare and formal it does record the proposals, amend-
ments, votes, and results. And it does preserve the brief speech
of greeting delivered at the convention's opening by its temporary
president, a propertyless white man named Alson Mygatt of
Warren County. He said, with an over-optimism born of fervent
desire:

This hour brings to a final end that system that enriches the few at
the expense of the many — that system that hindered the growth of
towns and cities, and built up large landed aristocracies — that system
that discouraged agricultural improvements and mechanic [al] arts —
that destroyed free schools, and demoralized church and State, has
come to an end.

He concluded that in spite of opposition from the President,
the planters, and the press they would continue to labor for
justice and equality for all, and they would not fail. 26

After a hundred and fourteen days of deliberation— prolonged
in part by the obstructionist tactics of the reactionary minority—
the delegates completed their constitution, an instrument aimed

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 171

at creating a non-oligarchic bourgeois democracy. Property rights
of women were recognized; imprisonment for debt was forbidden;
a non-segregating public school system was provided for; local
governmental organs were democratized; the judiciary was over-
hauled; the vote was given all men over twenty-one; and any
and all discrimination by governmental units or private corpora-
tions, especially vested with public functions, on the basis of
religion, color, or previous condition of servitude was illegalized.
Included, too, after lengthy debate, were rather drastic dis-
franchising provisions aimed at all who had held office under
the Confederacy or had voluntarily assisted her. As for Cald-
well, during all this, the record makes it possible to assert only
that he faithfully attended practically all meetings, was a member
of one committee and generally voted with the radical ma-
jority. 27

An event occurred involving Caldwell, however, in 1868, after
the convention had adjourned, which vividly demonstrates that
while Alson Mygatt was premature in hailing the end of “that
system that enriches the few at the expense of the many,” funda-
mental changes had indeed come to Mississippi. For in that
year, in broad daylight and on a street of Jackson, Charles Cald-
well shot and killed a white man, the son of a Judge Johnston,
was tried and was acquitted, the verdict being based on the
fact that the act had been committed in self-defense after the
victim had attempted to shoot the defendant. It would appear
safe to say that Caldwell was the first— perhaps the only— Negro
to kill a white man in Mississippi, be tried for the act, win an
acquittal and go unscathed. 28

Caldwell was a leader in the bitter, and, at first, unsuccessful
effort to obtain the constitution's ratification. Terror and intimi-
dation and a Federal military command generally sympathetic
to the planters largely account for the initial setback suffered
in the voting late in June, 1868, when, by a majority of under
8,000 in a total of over 120,000, the constitution was rejected. 29

Grant, however, finally removed General Gillem and replaced
him with General Adelbert Ames. In April, 1869, Grant received
authorization from Congress to order the submission of the
constitution of Mississippi (and that of Virginia and Texas)
without such provisions as he might deem it best to omit. 30

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172

When, therefore, the Mississippi constitution was voted upon
in December, 1869, along with a slate of state officers, it was
shorn of the disfranchisement clauses and was supported even
by the Democrats. The latter, in an effort at deception equaling
Hitler's National Socialist label, called themselves National
Union Republicans, spoke up for the constitution and nominated
President Grant's brother-in-law, Judge Lewis Dent, for the
governor's seat (together with several Negroes for other posi-
tions) . The maneuver had a sad denouement, for while it re-
sulted in the almost unanimous adoption of the constitution
(113,735 to 955), the Republican ticket scored a smashing victory
with Alcorn, the gubernatorial candidate, beating Mrs. Grant’s
brother by almost 40,000 votes. 31

The legislature that was then elected and which convened in
January, 1870, 32 contained one hundred and seven representatives
and thirty-three senators. In the House there were eighty-two
Republicans, of whom thirty were Negroes, and in the Senate
there were twenty-eight Republicans of whom five were Negroes.
Among the five was Charles Caldwell who had had to resign his
position as a member of the powerful Hinds County Board of
Police to accept this new assignment. 33 And in this new position
Caldwell remained until the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat
of 1875.

Once again these men are known by their fruits alone, for
little remains of their w r ork, in terms of record, other than the
legislative journals and the session laws. These may be sum-
marized for the years from 1870 to 1874.

The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were ratified; a
uniform system of public education and many institutions of
public welfare were established; the vagrancy laws were abol-
ished; tax rates on the tools and implements of mechanics and
artisans were lowered; and all acts having special and invidious
reference to the Negro were repealed with this explanation
appended:

That it is hereby declared to be the true intent, meaning and purpose
of this Act, to remove from the records of the laws of this State all laws
of whatever character, which in any manner recognize any natural dif-
ference or distinction between citizens or inhabitants of this State, or
which in any manner or in any degree, discriminate between citizens

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 1 73

or inhabitants of this State, founded on race, color or previous condi-
tion of servitude.

To put teeth behind this enactment another law provided a
fine of 55,000 to be assessed against any officer or agent of any
railroad or vessel guilty of Jim-Crowism. 34

Two laws enhancing the rights of women were passed. One
provided:

That the wages and compensation of married women for service and
labor done and performed by them, shall be free from the debt and
control of their husbands, and their employers are allowed to pay such
wages and compensation directly to such married women, and payment
to them shall be a full discharge and acquittance of the employer.

The other declared:

That it shall not be lawful for a married man to sell or otherwise
dispose of his homestead without the consent of his wife, and no deed
of conveyance from the husband for the homestead shall be valid unless
the wife shall join in such conveyance. . . . 35

Scores, perhaps hundreds, of incorporation charters were
granted by the Reconstruction legislatures of Mississippi during
their very short period of existence. Railroad, banking, public
utility, mining and manufacturing concerns were established as
the state officers consciously strove to break the stranglehold of
an agrarian, one-crop, semi-feudal economy whose controllers
were, of course, their political enemies. A most interesting law
was passed to encourage industrialization providing a refund
of all taxes for a period of ten years to manufacturing establish-
ments earning a profit under four per cent. 36

For the planters the situation was an impermissible one. With
such laws and such legislators, with courts, juries, police, city
and county governments, and schools falling more and more
under the influence of the radicals and with the latter gaining
experience, competence, and confidence with every passing
month how long would their monopoly of the land remain
decisive? How long before the political events and the economic
developments they fostered and in turn mirrored and the develop-
ing class of Negro officials and entrepreneurs 37 would decisively
challenge that monopoly itself?

More and more, too, the forms by which that monopoly ex-

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pressed itself were being challenged. Thus, in 1869 and again in
1870 Negro mass meetings and organizations, particularly their
Loyal Leagues, in Caldwell’s county of Hinds and elsewhere,
denounced sharecropping and even urged Negroes to refuse to
work on plantations for wage pittances but to insist upon the
status of renters and to pay, as rent, no more than $1.50 per
acre. The planters were, of course, hysterical in their fury at
such ideas and their press could hardly contain itself in hurling
invectives at the "impudent and impertinent niggers,” while
even the leading Republican organ, edited and controlled by
whites, thought these were the proposals of madmen. 88 Still,
might not the insane propositions of today become the realities
of tomorrow? Comparing 1860 with 1870 who was to say what
1880 might bring? There was no time to lose.

The ranks of the Democrats must be purged and closed; ruth-
less, co-ordinated and sustained terror must be employed upon
the radical rank and file as well as the leadership; and splits
in the Republican Party must be fostered and developed. Thus,
the Columbus Mississippi Democrat was calling, in December,
1870, for a revitalized party whose “leading ideas [should be]
that white men shall govern, that niggers are not rightly entitled
to vote. . . . There are professed Democrats who do not under-
stand Democratic principles, that want the party mongrelized . . .
[such] unprincipled men . . . will sink lower in the social scale
than the niggers themselves.”

The knout, the rope, the club, the torch, the gun and the
white hood are the instruments, the stuffed ballot boxes, the
burned schoolhouses and churches, the heaped corpses are the
results. And behind it all— wealth, corrupting, devastating
wealth. Give up your dreams or starve; come over to us and
prosper.

It is not possible to count the victims of this terror; it is very
much easier to count the numbers punished for there is none.
Reported the United States Attorney for the Northern District
of Mississippi in April, 1872 on his execution of the Federal
anti-KKK act passed the preceding year: two hundred arrests, no
convictions except of twenty-eight men who had confessed their
guilt, but even for these “the sentence was suspended.” The
report of the Attorney for the Southern District of the state was
similar: one hundred and fifty-two indictments, twelve confes-

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 1 75

sions, no convictions, no one punished. 89 Teachers, Negro and
white, were the particular objects of this terror, and in Winston
County, in 1871, all Negro schoolhouses and churches used as
schools were burned. 40

It was largely on the question of the suppression of this terror
that the sought-for split in the Republican Party occurred, 41
for the conservative element in that party, notably the planter-
governor himself, James L. Alcorn, helped frustrate all sugges-
tions of vigorous counter-action. And even when, at the height
of the terror, in March, 1871, President Grant informed Congress
that neither life nor property was secure in much of the South
and especially in Mississippi, and that body moved to the con-
sideration of an anti-Klan law, Alcorn vehemently opposed such
action. On April 2, he wired the Mississippi congressional dele-
gation urging them to defeat the proposed legislation and declar-
ing that doing nothing “will lead to absolute repose.”

Learning of this several members of the state legislature wired
to Mississippi’s Senator Ames the next day that. The auditor s
books show 54 killed from March 1, 1869, to March 1, 1870,
and 83 killed from March 1, 1870, to February 17, 1871. Report
of inquests on many known to have been killed since January I,
1871 not yet received by the auditor.” On April 4th Ames was
told by the same people: “Auditor’s books show killed last three
months: January, 11; February, 14; March, 23. Auditor states
at least 15 more killed in March not officially reported.” 42 In
the ensuing months the division between the Alcorn, or moder-
ate, Republicans, and the Ames, or radical. Republicans, grew.*

• Alcorn resigned his governorship in November, 1871, and took his seat
in the Senate to which the legislature had earlier elected him. While
there he opposed in December, 1871, Sumner's Civil Rights Bill, demanding.
“Give us the removal of our disabilities [i. e disfranchisement of top
Confederate figures and officials] and I will go with him who goes farthest
to demand of the southern people obedience to the law. Down, then, with
the Ku Klux, and I will go with you in all that is necessary to enforce that
demand/’— Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., p. 246. (In 1872 the
disabilities were removed).

In a speech on the floor of the Senate Alcorn broke completely, and
bitterly, with Ames. The latter, a native of Massachusetts, had risen to
the rank of general in the Union Army (as an artillery lieutenant he had
won the Congressional Medal of Honor) and was prominent in military
affairs in Mississippi prior to aligning himself with the left-wing of the
Republican Party. Benjamin F. Butler was his father-in-law. A biography
of Ames is needed.

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In 1873 this split reached the point worked for and dreamed
of by the Bourbons for both Alcorn and Ames announced them-
selves as gubernatorial candidates. When the regular party nomi-
nation went to Ames, Alcorn bolted and ran as a so-called
Independent Republican, whereupon the Democrats made no
nomination and threw their support behind him. This tactic
and the terrorism that had preceded it cut the radical majority,
but to the intense chagrin of the planters Alcorn was beaten by
almost 20,000 votes in a total of some 126.000. 43

But one decision was possible for the Bourbons: the time
for maneuvers and deals was passed. Nightly visits to annoying
individuals, spies and stool-pigeons to reveal the names of leaders,
remained useful. More important now, however, was to be the
technique of mass assault and mass terrorization, the technique
of the "riot” accompanied and followed by the slaughter of im-
pertinent ones, in groups of five, ten, a score. And all this was
to be in preparation for the supreme effort, the attempt at actually
seizing the reins of government, to come during the elections of
1875.

This had worked elsewhere— Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama—
it must be made to work in Mississippi. There had been tenta-
tive stabs at it, as a matter of fact, in Mississippi. Thus, at Meri-
dian, in March, 1871, about thirty Negroes were killed and the
local Republican government was overthrown, but this had not
resulted too happily for it had been the direct inspiration of a
Presidential message to Congress calling for protective measures
which in turn led to the anti-KKK act. 44

But when a country distraught by the panic of 1873 and
disgusted by the colossal corruption of the nouveaux riches
industrial bourgeoisie and their political henchmen inflicted a
resounding defeat upon the Republicans in the congressional
elections of 1874, Southern Democrats, and particularly those
in Mississippi, flung aside all restraint. In November and Decem-
ber, 1874, a systematic massacre of Negro leaders began with the
killing of about half a dozen in Austin and anywhere from about
40 to 80 in Vicksburg. The latter event was so horrible that it
resulted in the dispatching of some Federal troops in order to
call a halt, after the legislature, meeting in special session, had
appealed to the President. 45

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 177

In the election year of 1875 the butchery went on with regu-
larity— though not without resistance and occasional fatalities
among the assassins— Water Valley, Louisville, Macon (here some
dozen Negroes were killed by strong-arm squads coming in from
Alabama), Vicksburg again, and, on September 1, Yazoo City
where the radical white sheriff, A. T. Morgan, a former Union
colonel, was driven out and the usurpers continued their reign
of terror under the guise of a self-imposed martial law. 40

The climax, however, came on September 4 near Caldwell’s
home village of Clinton at the so-called Moss Hill riot. The
occasion was a Republican political celebration, parade, and
barbecue, to be accompanied by speeches. At the suggestion of
Caldwell, himself a candidate for re-election to the state senate
and chairman of the Hinds County Executive Committee of the
Republican Party, a Democrat was invited to debate the issues at
this meeting. 47

In the midst of the Republican’s speech, loud cursing and
heckling began. Caldwell himself, as he stated:

proceeded to the spot indicated. When I got there I asked what is the
matter. A policeman said this man Thompson has drawn a pistol on
one of the colored men who was marching in the procession, using
certain opprobrious epithets. I remarked, my young friend, for God’s
sake don't disturb the meeting. I soon saw that the feeling was so strong
and so determined that I called upon some of the other white men to
assist me in preserving the peace. No one responded. I saw Neil
Wharton and Thompson (white) draw their pistols and I slipped up to
Neil telling him that that would not do. I did the same with Thompson
and they put their weapons back in their pockets. In a few minutes
they had them drawn again; then the shooting began. I saw Thompson
shoot the first shot that was fired, pouring some four or five shots into
the crowd of which he had formed a part. At this time the firing had
become general. The colored people soon concentrated at this point,
when the white lines dispersed, and the firing ceased . 43

The casualties at the scene were approximately two whites
killed, four wounded; two Negroes killed, five wounded. There
followed, in and around Clinton, four days of unbridled, system-
atic slaughter of Negro and white radical leaders, the total
murdered coming to somewhere between thirty-five and fifty.
This was accomplished by about two hundred local citizen

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soldiery” as they were called, reinforced by a trainload of expertly
trained and fully armed men, known as Modocs, 49 sent from
Vicksburg at the request of Clinton's mayor. In the words of
the Democratic leader of Hinds county, “Throughout the county
for several days the negro leaders, some white and some black,
were hunted down and killed. . . .” B0 but not all were captured
for several hundred, including Caldwell, escaped to the capital.

The Modocs did not fail to visit Caldwell’s home, where his
wife was busy nursing two Negro victims of the riot. “About
fifty came out to my house that night [Sept. 4],” Mrs. Caldwell
tells us, 61 where they “plundered and robbed.” They stayed
until daybreak when, before leaving, their leader told her to
inform the senator that they were "going to kill him if it is two
years, or one year, or six; no difference; we are going to kill him
anyhow. We have orders to kill him, and we are going to do it,
because he belongs to this republican party, and sticks up for
these negroes.” Then, leaving her,

they went to a house where there was an old black man, a feeble old
man, named Bob Beasly, and they shot him all to pieces. And they
went to Mr. Willis’s and took out a man, named Gamaliel Brown, and
shot him all to pieces . . . and they goes out to Sam Jackson's, president
of the [Republican] club, and they shot him all to pieces . . . and they
went out to Alfred Hastings . . and they shot Alfred Hastings all to
pieces . . . every man they found they killed that morning. . . .

So it went for three more days, the Negroes meanwhile vainly
beseeching the authorities for arms with which they might defend
themselves.

In Clinton through all this a small detachment of Federal
troops bestirred itself not at all, though on the fourth day, “An
arrangement was made . . . that if they would stop the killing of
the negroes, the United States officers would not assume com-
mand but leave matters in charge of the [self-imposed] civil
authorities.” At a dinner for these officers and gentlemen the
guests all “arose, saluted and loudly cheered until the whole
building resounded with their tokens of good will" when the
genial guest of honor. Major Allen, the Federal commander,
entered. 52

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 1 79

On September 6 the leader of these usurpers, one S. M. Shelton,
wired J. Z. George, head of the state Democratic Party:

There can be no peace in Hinds County while the radical leaders
are at large. We are fully prepared to meet the issue and accept no terms
which do not assure their surrender or removal from the county. We do
not recognize the Ames government but will have no conflict with the
Federal authorities . 53

The next day Governor Ames issued a proclamation taking
note officially of the violence and terrorism and of the forceful
overthrow of legal county governments in Yazoo and Hinds,
and calling upon all extra-legal armed bodies, into which most
of the Democratic clubs had by now transformed themselves,
to disband.

This was greeted by defiance and ridicule. “Ha! Hall
Hall!” said the Mississippi Weekly Pilot the next day, “ ‘Com-
mand.’ ‘Disband.’ That’s good.” And the Yazoo City Herald
snorted, on September 10:

What impudence. Our dapper little Governor Ames comes to the
front with a proclamation ordering the disbandment of all the military
companies now organized in the State. If he had brains enough to know
his right hand from his left, he ought to know that no more attention
will be paid to his proclamation than the moon is popularly supposed
to pay to the baying of a sheep-killing dog.

And behind it all, the bitterness, the derision, the terror, as
the Yazoo City Banner admitted in a moment of frankness on
September 23, was this: “. . . wenches wedded to carpet-baggers,
and can’t work out— young negroes ain’t worth a damn. No
cotton pickers to be found for the big crop. Ain’t we in a hell of
a fix?”

The day after his proclamation, Ames appealed to Grant for
Federal assistance, but on September 11 George wired to the
Attorney-General, Edwards Pierrepont, that "perfect peace pre-
vails throughout the State, and there is no danger of disturbance
unless invited by the State authorities, which I hope they will
not do.’’ 54 The two Mississippi Senators split on their advice
to the President, the recently elected Negro, Blanche K. Bruce,
urging Federal aid, while James L. Alcorn, true to his role,
condemned such a course. 55 President Grant, through Pierre-

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pont, informed Ames, on September 14, that "The whole public
are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the
South,” that he, himself, was not convinced Federal aid was
really needed, and that therefore he was sending none. 88 Mean-
while, Pierrepont secretly sent a personal agent to Mississippi
to observe, report back, and to do his best to keep the disorder
below the surface.*

With the handful of Federal troops in the state officered by
men being dined and applauded by the planters, with legally
elected county governments overthrown and the usurpers pub-
licly asserting their defiance, with the press greeting appeals for
the terror to cease as “impudence" and announcing that, “The
people of this State are now fully armed, equipped, and
drilled,” 67 with hundreds of refugees crowding Jackson, and
with the Federal government announcing itself as “tired” of
reports of disturbances, Ames turned to enrolling and activating
a state militia.

State officers, both Negro and white, were appointed and the
enlistment of companies begun. In September and early October
seven companies were formed (five Negro, two white), and the
first of these to be mustered and armed— being the first to offer
itself was Company A, 2nd Regiment of Mississippi Infantry,
commanded by Captain Charles Caldwell and 1st Lieutenant
Eugene B. Welborn. 88

The first mission considered for Caldwell’s company was that
of spearheading a drive to overthrow the violently imposed reac-
tionary regime in Yazoo county and to reinstate in the sheriff’s
office Colonel Morgan. When this proposition was put to the
latter he rejected it on the ground that one or even two militia
companies ( i.e about two hundred men) would never succeed in
such a task but would simply be wiped out, and so the attempt
was not made. “It was certainly not the fault of the colored
company that they did not try,” Morgan wrote later, “My old

•This was a New York businessman, George K. Chase. It is dear that
while Chase s own agents reported violence almost everywhere so that he
himself told Pierrepont on October 27, 1875— rather latel— “It is impossible
to have a fair election on November 2 without the aid of U. S. troops/'
his central function was to help maintain a semblance of order ^-Boutwell
Report, II, pp. 1801-19.

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL l8l

friend, Charles Caldwell, was its captain. They were at all times
ready to go.” 6 ® That Morgan's estimate of the situation was
correct is apparent from a contemporary account of the prepara-
tions made to greet him in Yazoo when his coming was rumored —
nine hundred mounted, armed men were waiting. 60

But the governor did entrust Caldwell with a mission. It was
possible to enroll men in the militia, but how to get arms to
them? Some that had been sent from Jackson unprotected had
been captured and appropriated by the “civilian army.” 61 Now
arms would be delivered under guard. There was a company
formed at Edwards' Depot, some thirty miles due west of Jackson;
it needed guns and Caldwell's company would see that it got
them.

In the morning of October 9, 1875, Captain Caldwell and his
one hundred and two Negro men, carrying four days' rations,
and one hundred extra guns plus ammunition, set out— flags
flying, drums beating, bayonets fixed— for a march of a day and
a half via public road in the heart of Mississippi. They bivouacked
overnight just outside Clinton— from which many of the men
were refugees— sleeping lightly, it may be believed. Then, the
next morning, on to Bolton and into Edwards' Depot before
noon. Back they went, the same day, Caldwell leading two hun-
dred men now. On the return trip they picked up another com-
pany— this from Brownsville, a town ten miles north of Bolton—
and thus did Caldwell come marching into Jackson with three
hundred Negro militiamen, two-thirds of them armed, com-
pleting a truly amazing feat of courage and, above all, leader-
ship. 62

While Caldwell and his men were marching, the Democratic
managers were frantically telegraphing and visiting key personnel
and begging them to offer no resistance to the Negro. For, as
they pointed out, he would fight to the death, the battle could
not be hidden from view, he was the Governor's official repre-
sentative, and violence might lead to real Federal intervention,
a supervised election and defeat. 63

Desperately late as this action was— the election but three
weeks away— had it been energetically pursued, throughout the
state, the result might possibly have been different. But late in
September the Democratic command filed suit for a warrant

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restraining the state auditor from issuing any funds for military
purposes (since the state was not at warl) and this was granted
by the Chief Justice, E. G. Peyton, another one of the wealthy
old-line Whigs who, like Alcorn, had joined the Republican
Party. 64 On October 12 Governor Ames, apparently deciding all
was lost, ordered the disbanding of the militia companies and
the disarming of their members, although the latter command
does not appear to have been obeyed with alacrity or complete-
ness. 65

Three days later, at the prodding of the Democratic leaders
and the agent of the attorney-general, the governor entered into
a formal peace treaty with the former. This, while upon its face
an armistice, actually represented Ames' capitulation. It pledged
both parties to abstain from violence, fraud, and intimidation,
while Ames agreed to maintain the demobilization of the militia,
to complete its disarming, and to take no new step without first
consulting George, leader of the forces engineering the coup
d'etat. 66

Meanwhile in the same month another “riot" occurred at
Friar's Point resulting in the deaths of six Negroes and two
whites, whereupon Senator Alcorn urged the attorney-general
not to be unduly upset; . . there need be no alarm for the
peace of this country. ... A community of planters may be
relied on for kind treatment of laborers." Thereupon the sheriff
of Alcorn's own county of Coahoma was driven out two weeks
before the voting to assure its result and to guarantee the “kind
treatment." 67

Newspapers bore upon their mastheads the slogan, “Carry the
election peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must," bribery flour-
ished, employers fired known radicals, physicians refused to treat
them, and their names were published “for future reference"
with the whites among them marked for special vituperation.
And if, said the planters, it should by some miracle happen that
we lose, “all landowners will resist payment of all taxes. Legal
resistance will, when exhausted without giving results, be succeed-
ed by such protection as that afforded by Winchester rifles and
other peace-makers." 68

On October 29, Caldwell wrote the governor that the peace
treaty was a farce:

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 183

The intimidation and threatening of colored voters continues un-
interrupted, and with as much system, determined purpose, and com-
bination of effort as if it were a legitimate means of canvassing . . . the
peace agreement is held in utter contempt, and only serves as a cover
for perpetrating the very wrongs ... it was intended to prevent. In
behalf of the people whom I represent [he concluded] I appeal to your
excellency for the protection which the laws of the State guarantee to
every citizen regardless of party or race. 69

The day before the election a Negro wrote the governor from
Yazoo City:

I beg you most fulley to send the United soldiers here; they have
hung six more men . . . now they are going to have war here to-morrow;
send help; they told Mr. Richardson if he went to the telegraph office
to-morrow they would hang him; help, help, help, help; soon as you can
. . . fighting commence just as I were closing; 2 two killed; we would of
carred this election, but you keep listen at the white people; pleas send
troops and test the election; help; send troops and arms, pleas. . . . 70

Meanwhile The Nation was informing its cultured and liberal
clientele that “peace and harmony reign" throughout Mississippi
where “arrangements have been made by which fairness and a
spirit of concord will prevail in the future." This happy result
eventuated because of the wise refusal to send troops into the
area and despite the “large and ignorant black population, and
among the whites a considerable number of lawless fellows fond
of knifing and shooting. . . ." 71

As for the voting the leader of the Democratic Party for Hinds
county tells us what happened. First, the Republican registrar
was bribed to stay away. And, as foi the Negroes, there was “in-
dividual effort . . . persuasive, but if necessary, intimidation";
as for the ballots, “destruction of Republican tickets when they
could be gotten," or “substitution of Democratic for Republican
tickets." Precisely what was “intimidation"? Nine days after
the election, the Aberdeen Examiner, published in the seat of
Monroe county, explained that though a bridge had been torn
down and pickets posted to prevent the appearance of Negro
voters, still they came. As a result, “the man in charge of the
Democratic war department" [1] surrounded them with cavalry
imported from Alabama and with native infantry, kept the Ne-
groes covered with an artillery piece “and then sent a strong

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arm squad into the crowd to beat the Negroes over the head."™

But, for The Nation, “The election passed off quietly/' there
had been “a fair vote" and Mississippi was “emancipated."*

Charles Caldwell voted. Eugene Welborne, who had been
Caldwell's militia lieutenant, tells about it. On election day he
said to Caldwell:

“Senator, I think we might just as well give up; I don't see any
use trying to stay here any longer; we can't do anything here.
Here these men are riding all about the country with their six-
teen-shooters and cutting up in this manner."

Caldwell replied: “No; we are going to stay right here; you
must just come right along, and keep your mouth shut. I don't
care what they say to you, don't you say a word." And they
voted. 73

The Bourbons won the election. In Coahoma county while
there had been 1,300 Republican votes in 1873, there were 230
in 1875; in Yazoo county where 2,500 Republican votes were
cast in 1873 there were 7 in 1875. Yes, they won. But the remark-
able thing is that there were tens of thousands of radicals who
voted. In Caldwell's own county over 2,300 Republican votes
were cast-true, over a thousand below that of two years before,
but there were the votes. And in the state as a whole, while the
Democrats won by over 30,000 nevertheless there were 67,171
Republican votes counted . And twenty-two out of seventy-four
counties were won by the Republicans, a Negro Republican,

• Nov. 4, 1875, XXI, p. 285. Somewhat belatedly — on July 26, 1876 — Presi-
dent Grant confessed to Governor Chamberlain of South Carolina, that,
“Mississippi is governed today by officials chosen through fraud and violence
such as would scarcely be credited to savages, much less to a civilized and
Christian people.” The Nation, Aug. 10, 1876, XXIII, p. 81. A Federal Grand
Jury reported from Oxford, July 8 , 1876, “. . . we must say that the fraud,
intimidation and violence at the late election is without a parallel in the
annals of history. . . .” Boutwell Report, II, Doc. Evid., pp. 150/. The findings
of the Senate committee were the same, but. as The Nation declared: “Senator
Boutwell’s report seems to meet with universal condemnation from the Re-
publican press. . . .” — Aug. 17, 1876, XXIII, p. 97. Reconstruction was old
stuff, the Hayes-Tilden bargain was soon to be struck — let’s get on with the
Lord’s work, getting rich. Was not Bishop William Lawrence of Massachusetts
to usher in the twentieth century by remarking, “Godliness is in league with
riches”?

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 1 85

John R. Lynch, was re-elected to Congress (with considerable
white support) and sixteen Negroes were returned to the state
House of Representatives, in spite of everything.*

Clearly, from the Bourbon's viewpoint, the victory of 1875
was much too uncertain to permit them to dispense with terror.
No, the leaders whose names had been ostentatiously entered
on “death lists" during the election and who still survived must
be eliminated. 74 High on that list was such a one as Charles
Caldwell, and his murder came quickly.

It happened on Christmas Day, 1875, and this is how it was: 75

Living with the Caldwells was a nephew named David Wash-
ington. Early that Christmas David was in a Clinton blacksmith
shop when several white men, whom he knew, entered. They
wanted to know how many he, David, had killed on the day
of the Moss Hill riot, and did he come to town now to kill some
more, and if not what was he doing in town anyway? David
hurried home and told his aunt about this, and she said, “Don't
go out anymore. Probably they are trying to get up a fuss here."

Late in the afternoon Caldwell came home from work, learned
of the conversation and went into town “to see about it." He
returned shortly, had his dinner, and just before sundown went
back to the village.

There a friend (white or Negro does not appear in the evi-
dence— a Judas, in any case), named Buck Cabell, greeted him,
and this was returned, for Caldwell “never knowed nothing
against him." Cabell insisted that Caldwell go with him to Chil-
ton's store and let himself be treated, on this holiday, to a drink.
The two men went to the store's basement, poured their drinks,
lifted their glasses, and then " . . at the tap of the glasses ... as

• Statistics from official figures in Boutwell Report , II, Doc. Evid., pp. 144-
45. Mechanically comparing the Republican vote of 1875 with the Ames vote
of 1873, as does Donald, op. cit., p. 459, and concluding that the Republicans
polled only 3,000 less in the former year than in the latter is completely un-
realistic and ignores the fact that the 1873 election saw both candidates run-
ning, nominally, as Republicans, thus splitting the vote. The idea that Negro
political activity and struggle simply and immediately ceased with the
overthrow of Reconstruction, while very widespread, is quite erroneous. In
Mississippi, for example, the pattern of 1875 was repeated at each election
until 1890, when the illegal disfranchisement of the Negro was put into the
constitution— a constitution, by the way, never ratified by the people. But
that requires a separate study.

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l86

they struck their glasses, that was the signal to shoot/' And he
was shot in the back of the head by someone "from the outside
of the gate window, and he fell to the ground."

In the street stood the assassins— many of them. But Caldwell
was not yet dead. He called for Judge Cabaniss, 76 "a particular
friend," but the judge did not come, and he called for the store-
owner, but he did not come, and he called for "I don't know who
else. They were all around, and nobody went to his relief; all of
them men standing around with their guns." Finally one
Preacher Nelson went to the cellar door and called in to Cald-
well not to shoot him and he'd come to him. Caldwell said he
would not harm him, just "take me out of the cellar" for he
"wanted to die in the open air, and did not want to die like
a dog closed up."

Preacher Nelson carried him to the street and Caldwell asked
that they "take him home and let him see his wife before he
died; that he could not live long." But they would not do it;
instead "they all cried, 'We'll save him while we got him; dead
men tell no tales.' " Caldwell "never begged them" and he stood
up and then "taking both sides of his coat and bringing them
up so, he said, 'Remember when you kill me you kill a gentle-
man and a brave man. Never say you killed a coward. I want
you to remember it when I am gone." Then "they riddled him
with thirty or forty of their loads" and he was dead. And Preacher
Nelson told his widow that "a braver man never died than
Charles Caldwell."

Just then up the streets of Clinton rode Caldwell's brother,
Sam, a man quite unlike Charles, a mild man, "never known
to shoot a gun or pistol in his life— never knew how," but they
killed him, too, for fear he would spread the alarm.

Yet the alarm did reach the Negro community; it was still
early— "the moon was quite young, and the chapel bell rang"
and this was the signal of danger. "When the bell tolled [the
Negro men] rushed right out; they went through the door and
some slid down the window and over they sprang; some went
over the fence. They all ran to the chapel and got their guns"—
one hundred and fifty guns and then they stood guard over their
homes.

Later that evening the bodies of Charles and Sam Caldwell—

RECONSTRUCTION AND CHARLES CALDWELL 187

Sam's wife now alone with three young ones— were brought home
and laid out and the widows mourned. But not in peace did
they mourn, for Caldwell's murder had so enraged the Negro
people that the planters felt a need for reinforcements and in
from Vicksburg once again came the Modocs. 77 And once again
they called on Mrs. Caldwell. It was now one o'clock in the
morning of the 26th.

"They all marched up to my house," said Mrs. Caldwell, "and
went into where the two dead bodies laid, and they cursed them,
those dead bodies, there, and they danced and threw open the
window, and sung all their songs, and challenged the dead body
to get up and meet them." "Get up and fight,” they said to
Charles Caldwell, and then they struck him, but this time, for
the first and only time, Caldwell did not meet their challenge
and did not answer blow for blow.

With such blood fertilizing its soil the Commercial and Finan-
cial Chronicle of New York could well tell its subscribers that
the South "now presents a more hopeful condition than any
other portion of the country. She is virtually out of debt; her
people have learned to economize . . . labor is under control
for the first time since the war, and next year will be more
entirely so, permitting of further economies. . . ." 78

So perished, as the chroniclers of Mississippi have asserted,
"a notorious and turbulent negro." Those having different values
may find other adjectives.

It is altogether likely that one day Mississippi school children,
Negro and white, will be taught to revere the name and to hold
precious the memory of Charles Caldwell. 79

4

APPENDIX

Negro Members of Union Navy Killed in Action 1

Name

Stephen Jones
George B. Dewvent 1
Daniel Moore
Robert Howard
Robert Cook
James Lloyd

Rating

Date Scene

Ship

Source

contraband* 7/9/62 off Plymouth
N. C.

Commodore

Perry

R-62, p. 147

wdrm.

steward

6/28/62 Shelling
Vicksburg

Clifton

0-18, p, 643

officer’s

steward

12/31/62 off Cape
Hatteras

Monitor
(sank, storm)

R-63,* p. 27

officer’s

cook

12/31/62 off Cape
Hatteras

Monitor
(sank, storm)

R-63,* p. 27

cabin boy

12/31/62 off Cape
Hatteras

Monitor
(sank, storm)

R-63. 4 p- 27

boy

12/13/62 off New-
bern, N. C.

Ellis

0-8, p. 291
(compare R'

William Ayler pilot

Robert McKinsey 2d cl. boy

Robert Willinger 2d d. boy

Joseph Mays landsman

Henry Newton 1st cl. boy

Isaac Deer coal heaver

(missing, believed dead)

William Parker coalheaver

George Jackson contraband

3 unnamed contraband

James Haywood contraband

James Wilson 1st d. boy

Albert Williams 1st d. boy

Richard Howard 1st cl. boy

Henry Freeman 8 1st d. boy

Alfred Banks boy

Lewis Liverman ?

William Wilson 1st d. boy

Jeremiah Sills landsman

George Brimsmaid landsman

(murdered after capture)

Richard Ashley boy

Many (less than 22)
all unnamed; one stated
as killed, others missing
Unnamed

Charles H. Thomas seaman

(missing)

4/17/63 Nansemond
River

1/31 /62 off Charleston
1/31/62 off Charleston
1/30/63 StonoR.
1/1/63 Galveston
2/23/63 Berwick Bay

2/23/63

3/15/63

3/15/63

4/29/63

5/27/63

5/27/63

5/27/63

5/27/63

2/2/64

2/2/64

5/5/64

6/4/64

12/5/65

8/5/64

9/7/63

Berwick Bay
Port Hudson
Port Hudson
Grand Gulf
Vicksburg
Vicksburg
Vicksburg
Vicksburg
Newbern, N. C.
Newbern, N. C.
Yorktown
Ossabaw Sound
Magnolia
Beach, S. C.
Mobile
Sabine Pass

6/24/64 Clarendon
1/19/65 Ft. Fisher

Coeur de Lion R-63, p. 93

Keystone State R-63, p. 168-169
Keystone State R-63, p. 168-169
R-63, p. 184
R-63. p. 315-16
R-63. p- 335

R-63, p. 335
O 19, p. 683
0-19, p- 683
R-63, p. 480
O 25, p. 43
0-25, p. 43
0-25, p. 43
0-25, p. 43
0-9, p. 446
R-64, p. 172
0-9, p. 726
R-64, p. 344

0-15, p. 160

R-64, p. 465
0-20, p. 542

R-64, p. 595
R-65, p. 103

Isaac Smith
Harriet Lane
Col. Kinsman

Col. Kinsman

Mississippi

Mississippi

Pittsburg

Cintinnati

Cintinnati

Cincinnati

Cindnnati

Underwriter

Underwriter

Mystic

Water Witch
Perry

Lackawanna

Clifton

Queen City
Minnesota

igO TO BE FREE

Johnson Smith

landsman

4/1/65

Blakely River,
Ala.

Rodolph

0 - 22 . P . 74

Jule Baltour

boy

4/1/65

Blakely River,
Ala.

Rodolph

0-22, p. 74

Philip Williams

landsman

4/1/65

Blakely River,
Ala.

Ida

R-65, p. 385

G. D. Andrews

1st d. boy

4/12/65

Mobile Bay

Althea

R-65, p. 386

J. Glen

landsman

4/12/65

Mobile Bay

Althea

R-65, p. 386

Frank Davis

contraband

10/3/62

Franklin, N. C.

Hunchback

0-8, p. Ill

Unnamed

4/19/63

Near Plymouth, Smithfield

0-9, p. 422

N. C.

Unnamed pilot

4/?/62

New Smyrna,

Henry Andrew 0-13, p. 83

(wounded, murdered
after capture)

Fla.

0-12, p. 647

William Moran

landsman

5/23/64

St. John’s R.,

Columbine

0-15, p. 449

Fla.

Stephen Downey

?

3/15/63

Port Hudson

Mississippi

0-19. p. 683

Scot Lewis

?

3/15/63

Port Hudson

Mississippi

0-19, p. 683

Moses Obenton

(all 3 reported as missing)

?

3/15/63

Port Hudson

Mississippi

0-19. p. 683

3 unnamed

contraband

3/25/63

Vicksburg

Switzerland

0-20, pp. 18-20

(one place, given as
drowned; another.

“badly scalded”)

Chas. J. Pemberton

seaman

8/5/64

Mobile

Tecumseh

0-21, p. 492

Nat B. Delano

landsman

8/5/64

Mobile

Tecumseh

0-21, p. 492

Charles Hannible

landsman

8/5/64

Mobile

Tecumseh

0-21, p. 492

Charles C. Derris

landsman

8/5/64

Mobile

Tecumseh

0-21, p. 492

John Jay

landsman

8/5/64

Mobile

Tecumseh

0-21, p. 492

At least 37 (unnamed)

contraband

7/15/62

Yazoo R.

Lancaster

0-23, p. 244

Robert Higgins

coal heaver

4/26/64

Junction Red
and Cane R.

Juliet

0-26, p. 84

Joseph Scott

ord. seaman 4/26/64

Junction Red

Ft. Hindman

0-26, p. 85

and Cane R.

George Matthews

ord. seaman

8/11/64

Rowdy Bend,

Prairie

0-26, p. 505

Ark. (?)

1 The key to the source column of this table is: R means Report of the Secretary of the Navy,
and it is followed by the last two numbers of the pertinent year — thus, R-62 means Report
of the Secretary for 1862; O means Official Report of the Union and Confederate Navies and
this is followed by the appropriate volume. The volume, in every case, unless otherwise
indicated, is of Series I.

* Where one found the term “contraband” for rating, this was generally equivalent to saying

that the individual’s rank was that of a first, second, or third-class boy, which carried a
monthly pay of $10, $9, $8 respectively.

* In R-62, p. 411, this name is given as Derwent, but the above, from the muster-roll, seems to

be correct.

4 The source does not indicate that these men were Negro, but the muster-roll of the ship does.

* In R-63, p. 505, name given as Truman.

APPENDIX

* 9 *

To complete the picture of casualties, as presented by the two basic sources
used in compiling the above data, another table is herewith presented concerning
Negro members of the Union Navy who were wounded or captured by the enemy.

Engagements in which Negroes of
Union Navy were Wounded or Captured

Number wounded

Date

Scene

Ship

1

7/9/62

Plymouth, N. C.

Shaw sheen

2

3/10/62

Newport News

Minnesota

1

7/15/62

Vicksburg

Hartford

1

1/31/63

Charleston

Keystone State

1

1/1/63

Galveston

Owasco

5

1/1/63

Galveston

Harriet Lane

(captured)

22

1/23/63

Galveston

Morning Light

(captured)

3

5/27/63

Vicksburg

Cincinnati

1

3/31/64

Colleton R., S.C.

Chippewa

2

8/5/64

Mobile

Hartford

2

8/5/64

Mobile

Lackawanna

1

8/5/64

Mobile

Kennebec

several

9/?/63

Sabine Pass

Clifton

(number not stated; captured)

several

4/22/64

Yazoo City

Petrel

(number not stated; captured)

several

6/24/64

Clarendon

Queen City

(number not stated; captured)

3

1/30/63

Stono R., S. C.

Isaac Smith

5

4/1/65

Blakely R., Ala.

Rodolph

1

4/1/65

Blakely R.

Ida

1

4/12/65

Mobile Bay

Althea

1

1/10/62

Elizabeth City, N. C.

Valley City

1

3/3/63

Little River Inlet,

Matthew Vassar

(captured)

D N

15

5/6/64

Sabine Pass

Granite City W;

(captured aboard both vessels)

1

6/17/62

St. Charles, Ark.

Mound City

1

8/30/62

Between Paducah, Ky.

Terry

& Hamburg, Tenn.

1

4/12/64

Pleasant Hill, La. (?)

Lexington

9

6/24/64

Clarendon (?)

Queen City

(captured)

1

3/17/65

Mattox Creek. Va.

Don

Source

R-62, p. 148
R-62, p. 96
R-62, p. 417
R-63, p. 169
R-63, p. 311
R-63, p. 318

R-63, p. 328-50

R-63, p. 505
R-64, p. 308
R-64, p. 464
R-64, p. 465
R-64, p. 469
R-64, p. 491

R-64. p. 581
0-26, p. 249
R-64, p. 595

0-15, p. 567
0-21, p. 132-33
0-21, p. 133
R-65, p. 386
0-6, p. 615
0-8, p. 585

0-21. p. 264

0-23, p. 181
0-23, p. 333

0-26, p. 50
0-26. p. 419

0-5. p. 535

TO BE FREE

192

It will be observed that these tables specifically account for
approximately two hundred battle casualties among Negro crew
members of the Union fleet. The great limitations, however, of
the sources used in compiling these tables are to be borne in
mind. First, not every engagement involving casualties is re-
ported. Second, in some cases, the fact that casualties were
sustained is mentioned, but no indication is given of the
numbers involved. Third, in many cases, where numbers are
shown, and even, at times, where names are given, there is no
way of discovering, from these sources alone, the color of the
men involved.

That some of the men named in the Official Records as
casualties, though not there identified as to color, actually were
Negroes, is a demonstrable fact. For example, the names of four
of the casualties aboard the U.S.S. Stepping Stones in engage-
ments of April 13-14, 1863, on the Nansemond River, below
Suffolk, Virginia, are given in the printed source, but their
color is not indicated. When, however, one checks the muster-
roll of the vessel he finds that three of those mentioned, Giles
Scott, John Down, and Samuel Dent, were Negroes. 6

Still another example is that of William H. Brown, whose
name only is given as one of those wounded aboard the Brooklyn
at Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, but checking the muster-roll
discloses that he was a Negro. 7

•ORN, ser. I, vol. VIII, p. 725; muster-roll. Stepping Stones , June 30, 1863,
Navy Department Records, National Archives, Washington, D. C.

7 ORN, ser. L, vol. XXI, p. 409; muster-roll dated June 30, 1864, NDR. A
truly definitive study of the Negro in the Union Navy and the casualties he
suffered would require the checking of the muster-rolls of the over one
thousand vessels composing that force, and comparing all casualty reports
with those rolls, a task probably outside the capabilities of a single indi-
vidual. Note should be taken, too, of the fact that Negroes were in the
crews of commercial ships and privateers during the War. For note of the
legal problems arising from the capture of some of these by the Confederacy,
see W. M. Johnson, Jr., The Confederate Privateers (New Haven, 1928),
pp. 40, 95.

REFERENCE NOTES

SLAVE GUERRILLA WARFARE

1 Similarly, in the Encyclopedia of the Negro— Preparatory Volume (rev.
edit., N. Y. 1946) , p. 119, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois and G. B. Johnson, the
entry under maroons describes them as outlying belligerent fugitive
Negroes of the West Indies and Central and South America, but not
within the United States. Some contemporary writers and a few later
historians have noticed, in a general and meager way, the existence of
this feature of American slavery. See Charles W. Janson, The Stranger
in America (London, 1807) , pp. 328-30; William H. Russell, My Diary ,
North and South (Boston, 1863) , pp. 88-89; Frederick L. Olmsted, Journey
in Seaboard Slave States (2 vols., London, 1904) , II, pp. 177-78, Olmsted,
Journey in the Back Country (London, 1860) , pp. 30, 55; T. W. Higgin-
son. Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston, 1870) , p. 248; James
Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (2 vols., Boston, 1860) , II, pp. 397-98; W.
H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (N. Y., 1899) , p. 25; S. M. Ellis,
The Solitary Horseman (Kensington, 1927) , p. 169; V. A. Moody, in
Louisiana Historical Quarterly (1924) , VII, pp. 224-25; R. H. Taylor, in
North Carolina Historical Review (1928) , V, pp. 23-24; U. B. Phillips, in
The South in the Building of the Nation (Richmond, 1909) , IV, p. 229.

* See an article by Edmund Jackson in The Pennsylvania Freeman , January 1.
1852; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred (2 vols., Boston, 1856) ; Margaret Davis
in South Atlantic Quarterly (1934), XXXIII, pp. 171-84; and references
in footnote 1 above.

8 W. Hening, Statutes At Large of Virginia , II, p. 299; P. A. Bruce Economic
History of Virginia in 17th Century (2 vols., N. Y., 1896), II, p. 115;
MS. Order Book, Middlesex County, 1680-1694, pp. 526-27, in Archives,
Virginia State Library, Richmond.

4 E. C. Holland, A Refutation of the Calumnies . . . (Charleston, 1823) . p. 63;
D. D. Wallace, The History of South Carolina (4 vols., N. Y.. 1934) , I,
p. 372.

8 Virginia Manuscripts from British Record Office — Sainsbury, IX, p. 462 in
Va. State Library.

•MS. Council Journal, V, pp. 487, 494, XI. pp. 187, 383, in South Carolina
Historical Commission, Columbia, S. C.

7 D. D. Wallace, op. cit. t I, p. 373; The Boston Chronicle , Oct. 3-10, 1768;
A. D. Candler, ed.. The Colonial Records of Georgia (Atlanta, 1907) , XIV,
pp. 292-93.

•A. D. Candler, ed., op. cit XII, pp. 146-47, 325-26.

193

REFERENCE NOTES

194

•M. D. Conway, Omitted Chapters in History Disclosed in I/m Life and
Papers of Edmund Randolph (N. Y., 1888) , pp. 50-51,

10 W. B. Stevens, A History of Georgia (2 vols., Phila., 1859). II, pp. 576 . 78 -
Historical Manuscripts Commission , Report on American Manuscripts
(London, 1904) , II, p. 544; Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History
(Washington, 1928) , p. 123. A wealthy Charlestonian, William Reynolds
Sr., in a letter of December 12, 1783, declared that thirty of his slaves had
fled, followed the British General Provost’s army “from this state to
Savannah,” and that thereafter most of them had fled again and joined
Creek Indians. Slavery File, S. C. Hist. Comm. J

U AU cited MSS. in S. C. Hist. Comm.

“Letter dated Richmond, Nov. 19, 1792, in Boston Gazette, Dec. 17, 1792 .
“Wilmington Chronicle, July 3, 10, 17, 1795 (photostats. Lib. of Cong)-
Charleston City Gazette, July 18. 23, 1795; R. H. Taylor in North Carolina
Historical Review (1928) , V, pp. 23-24.

14 MSS., S. C. Hist. Comm.

“Raleigh Register, June 1, 1802 (State Library, Raleigh); N. Y. Herald
June 2, 1802; Edenton Gazette, March 22, 1811; G. G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum
North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1937) , p. 514.

“ J. W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1812 (N. Y., 1925) , pp. 92, 116, 192-95, 212.

“T. F. Davis in Florida Historical Quarterly (1930) , IX, pp. 106-07, 111 138-
Niles 1 Weekly Register (Baltimore) , Dec. 12, 1812, III, pp. 235-37.

“See, for example, Richmond Enquirer, July 10, 1816.

“Hartford Connecticut Courant, Sept. 10, 24, 1816; State Papers, 2d sess., 15th
Cong., Vol. IV; J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the U. S., IV, p.43l-
McMaster’s account is practically copied by H. B. Fuller, The Purchase of
Florida (Cleveland, 1906) , p. 228.

*°H. T. Cook, Life and Legacy of David R. Williams (N. Y., 1916) , p. 130.
n Raleigh Register, Nov. 13, 27, 1818.

”G. G. Johnson, op. cit., p. 514.

“ U. B. Phillips, ed., Plantation and Frontier Documents (2 vols., Cleveland,
1909) , II, p. 91; Edenton Gazette, May 12, 1820, quoted by N. Y. Evening
Post, May 17, 1820. 6

u N. Y. Evening Post, June 11, 1821.

* petition of John H. Hill, colonel of the Carteret Militia, dated Decem-
ber, 1825, and accompanying memoranda in Legislative Papers, 1824-25
(No. 366) , North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh; R. H. Taylor,
op. cit., V, p. 24; G. G. Johnson, op. cit., p. 514.

"N. Y. Evening Post, May 11, 1824.

” Washington National Intelligencer, July 23, Aug. 24, 1822.

"See N. Y. Evening Post, May 15, 29, June 5, 30, 1823.

■Charleston City Gazette, quoted in N. Y. Evening Post, Oct. 24, 1823; Niles’
Weekly Register, Oct. 18, 1823, XXV, p. 112; T. J. Kirkland and R. M.
Kennedy, Historic Camden (Columbia, 1926) pt. two, p. 190.

■ MSS, S. C. Hist. Comm.

“Mobile Register , quoted in N. Y. Evening Post, July 11, 12, 1827; U. B.
Phillips in The South in the Building of the Nation, IV, p. 229.

REFERENCE NOTES

195

“ N. Y. Evening Post, Dec. 4, 1827.

■N. Y. Evening Post, Aug. 10, 1829.

■ MS., S. C. Hist. Comm.

■ G. G. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 515, 517; R. H. Taylor, op. cit., V, p. 31.

■See letter Nov. 15, 1830, Newbem, from J. Turgwyn to Gov. John Owen in
Governor’s Letter Book, XXVIII, pp. 247-49, and letter from J. I. Pasteur

to Gov. Owen same date and place, in Governor's Papers, No. 60. N. C.

Hist. Comm., Raleigh.

07 See, The Liberator, Jan. 8, Mar. 19, 1831; Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 30, 1831.

“ Louisiana Advertiser, June 8, quoted by Liberator, July 2, 1836; New Orleans
Picayune, July 19, 1837.

■ The Liberator, Mar. 18, 1837; John T. Sprague, The Origin, Progress, and
Conclusion of the Florida War (N. Y., 1848) , p. 309; J. R. Giddings, The
Exiles of Florida (Columbus, 1858) , pp. 121, 139; Grant Foreman, Indian
Removal (Norman, 1932) , pp. 336, 383.

“Wilmington Chronicle, Jan. 6, 1841, in The Liberator, Jan. 22, 1841.

“New Orleans Bee, Oct. 4, 1841; Lafourche (La.) Patriot, in Liberator, Nov.
12, 1841.

“St. Louis Argus, July 23, 1841, quoted in Niles' National Register, Aug. 7,
1841, LX, p. 360; John D. Lang and Samuel Taylor, Jr., Report of a Visit
to Some of the Tribes of Indians Located West of the Mississippi (Provi-
dence, 1843) , p. 41. Compare with Joseph B. Thoburn, A Standard History
of Oklahoma (4 vols., Chicago, 1916) , I, pp. 254-55.

“ Hanesville Free Press, Mar. 1, 1844, quoted by Liberator, Apr. 5, 1844; New
Orleans Picayune, quoted by Liberator, Dec. 4, 1846.

44 J. R. Giddings, op. cit., pp. 316, 334, 337; F. L. Olmstead, Seaboard . . . ,
Vol. I, p. 177; Back Country, pp. 30, 55.

“Governor’s Letter Book, No. 43, pp. 514-15, N. C. Hist. Comm.

“Vicksburg Whig, quoted by The Liberator, Apr. 3, 1857; Norfolk Day Book,
Oct. 13, 1859; Laura White, in Journal of Southern History, (1935) , I, p. 47.

47 N. Y. Tribune, March 11, 1861; H. M. Henry, Police Control of the Slave
in South Carolina (Emory, 1914) , p. 121.

“ Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (hereafter cited as
ORA) , ser. I, Vol. IX, p. 199. — Burnside to Stanton, Mar. 14, 1862.

“ORA, ser. I, Vol. LIII, p. 233.

80 Calendar of Virginia State Papers , XI, pp. 233-36.

“ ORA, ser. I, Vol. XV, p. 947; G. L. Tatum, Disloyalty in the Confederacy
(Chapel Hill, 1934) , p. 63.

“Tatum, op. cit., p. 88; ORA, ser. I, Vol. XXV, pt. 2, p. 607.

■ Richmond Daily Examiner, Jan. 14, 1864.

“See, for example, Stuart Jamieson, “Labor Unionism in American Agricul-
ture,” in Monthly Labor Review (1946) , LXII, p. 26.

BUYING FREEDOM

1 Helen T. Catterall, ed.. Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the
Negro (5 vols., Washington, 1926-1937) , I. pp. 157, 302; IV, pp. 172, 177,

196 REFERENCE NOTES

180; V, p. 213. See also Kate E. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed
(Syracuse, 1856) , p. 47.

•Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England (N. Y„ 1942) , pp
184, 291.

•Catterall, ed., op. cit., I, p. 81. Sec, Marion J. Russell, “American Slave Dis-
content in Records of the High Courts," in Journal of Negro History (1916) ,
XXXI, p. 425.

4 Logan v. Commonwealth , 1845, in Catterall, I, p. 208. Later a lower court
ruled a contract between master and slave, calling for the payment of $350
for freedom and providing that the Negro be at liberty while earning this
sum, invalid as being contrary to public policy, but this was reversed, in
1859, it being held “this contract is not void as being against public policy."
— Shue v. Turk, ibid., 1, pp. 248-50; see also pp. 134, 152, 158.

® Craig v. Mullen, 1840, ibid., I, pp. 348-49; see also pp. 302, 412.

• Ford v. Ford, 1846, Catterall, II, p. 530; see also pp. 479, 514, 534, 585. For
the Tennessee law see R. L. Caruthers and A. Nicholson, Compilation of
the Statutes of Tennessee (Nashville, 1836) , p. 279. The text of this act
makes clear the fact that contracts for self-purchase had been recognized
prior to its enactment.

T Articles 174 and 177. See Catterall, III, p. 631, and 670. Under Spanish rule
slaves in Louisiana had had the right to demand their assessment if they
could produce anyone willing to pay for their emancipation, and they might,
also, challenge the price thus fixed. — Ibid., Ill, pp. 427, 440, 444. See, how-
ever, the case of Suriray v. Jenkins, 1776 ( Louisiana Hist. Quart. 1928,
XI, pp. 338-52) where the Attorney of the Royal Audiences at Havana
advised freedom at the price of the slave’s acquisition, but the Royal Gov-
ernor of Louisiana, de Galvez, refused to heed this as he felt that while it
might be proper for Cuba, it did not cover “the rest of His Majesty’s
Dominions."

9 Guardian of Sally (< a Negro) v. Beaty, 1792, in Catterall, II, p. 275; in 1846,
however, this court found it necessary to rule that “all the acquisitions of
the slave are the property of the master ." — Gist v. Toohey, Ibid., II, p.398.

9 Ibid., IV, pp. 87, 170, 172, 180.

10 John H. Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina 1790-1860 (Chapel
Hill, 1943) , pp. 27-29. The quoted provision was part of a general anti-
manumission law, but its enforcement was not rigid.

11 These practices existed despite repeated laws illegalizing them. For an ex-
ample of such a law note that of Tennessee, enacted 1823, providing a fine
of from one to two dollars per day for every day that a master “shall hire
to any slave or slaves, the time of such slave. . . ," in Caruthers and Nichol-
son, eds., op cit., p. 679. In the city of Richmond there were, in 1860, eight-
een luring agents, that is, men whose profession it was to serve as employ-
ment bureaus for the approximately five thousand slaves who were hired
workers in or near that town. In 1852 the Petersburg Daily Express professed
alarm at this practice in its town, and said the Negroes were approaching
“the condition of the whites." — L. Jackson, Free Negro. . . , pp. 176, 181.
See also, Wright, op cit., p. 75; Turner, op cit., p. 60; J. H. Easterby, ed.,
The South Carolina Rice Plantation. . . (Chicago, 1945) , p. 34; H. Aptheker,
American Negro Slave Revolts (N. Y., 1943) , p. 64; W. R. Hogan, The Texas

REFERENCE NOTES

*97

Republic (Norman, 1946) , p. 22. A slave blacksmith, John Dogan, of Knox-
ville, Tenn., agreed with his master to turn over all money earned during
the first ten hours of each day’s labor, while he was permitted to retain
everything made thereafter. Two years after this agreement the slave had
accumulated enough money to purchase his wife-to-be, and in another two
years he paid his master $600 for his own freedom — Charles W. Cansler,
Three Generations: The Story of a Colored Family of Eastern Tennessee
(n.p., 1939) , p. 23; and J. M. England, “The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum
Tennessee," in The Journal of Southern History (1943) , IX, p. 40.

“Slaves, for example, participated in lotteries and, as winners, were allowed
to retain the prize. In this way Newport Gardner of Providence, Rhode
Island, and Denmark Vesey of Charleston were able to buy their freedom. —
L. Greene, op. cit., p. 294; H. Aptheker, op. cit., p. 268.

“Wright, op. cit., p. 79.

14 U. B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (N. Y., 1918) , p. 427.

“ Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, 1929) , p. 293.

16 L. P. Jackson, Free Negroes. . . , pp. 184-85, 188-89. Virginia, in 1806, re-
quired that manumitted slaves leave the state within one year from the
date of emancipation. Permission, however, could be granted by the legisla-
ture to remain permanently. In the state archives at Richmond there are
such petitions from at least ninety-one Negroes who had purchased their
freedom. Most of these were urban, skilled workers. See J. H. Johnston,
“Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South, 1776-1860,"
unpub. doctorate, University of Chicago, 1937, pp. 4-6. For similar data for
Norfolk see L. P. Jackson, “Negro Enterprise in Norfolk during the Days
of Slavery," in The Quarterly Journal of the Florida A.kM. College (April,
1939) , VIII, pp. 5-12. See also J. P. Guild, Black Laws of Virginia (Rich-
mond, 1936) , p. 72.

17 A. Mott, Biographical Sketches of People of Color (N. Y., 1839) , p. 240.

“Letter dated Cincinnati, March 18, 1834, in G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond,

eds., Weld-Grimke Letters (2 vols., N. Y., 1934) , I, p. 134. An investigation
of Cincinnati at about the same time found that of the approximately 2300
Negroes then in the dty, 1,129 had been in slavery of whom 476 had pur-
chased their freedom at a total cost of over $215,000. Moreover, it was stated:
“There are a large number in the dty who are now working out their own
freedom — their free papers being retained as security . . . others are buying
their husbands and wives, and others again their parents or children."
Report on the Condition of the People of Color in the State of Ohio, From
the Proceedings of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention, held at Putnam, on
the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of April, 1835 (n.d., n.p.) . Similarly, a careful
census of the Negro population of Philadelphia, made in 1847, found that
of 1,077 residents who had been bom slaves, 275 had purchased their own
freedom at a cost of over $60,000 .— A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition
of the People of Colour, of the City and Districts of Philadelphia, (Phila.,
1849) , p. 10 .

“See The Journal of Negro History, III (1918) , p. 91; XIII (1928) , p. 534

*°E. M. Boykin, “Enterprise and Accumulation of Negroes prior to 1860," un-
published master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1933, p. 26.

n L. P. Jackson, op. cit., p. 191.

“J. H. Franklin, op. cit., p. 31.

REFERENCE NOTES

198

“L. P. Jack»on, op. cit., p. 186.

** Guion G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina (Chapel Hill), p. 587- y/
W. Hening. Statutes at Large of Virginia (Phila., 1823) , XIII, p. 619- £ P
Jackson, op. cit., pp. 178, 187; J. H. Johnston, op. cit., p. 36; Booker T
Washington, The Story of the Negro (2 vols., N. Y., 1909) , 1 , p. 195 gJ
also Transcriptions of Parish Records of Louisiana prepared by the His
torical Records Survey Division . . . WPA. Jefferson Parish (Gretna) Scries
I, Police Jury Minutes, Vol. I, 1834-1843 (New Orleans, 1939, mimeo-
graphed) , pp. 137, 139, 169, 173, 177, 185, 239, 290; Ibid., Iberville Parish
(Plaquemine ) , I, (1850-1862) , pp. 8 , 47; The Journal of Mississippi Hu
tory (1941) , III, pp. 44-45.

" Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis (Baltimore, 1859) , preface. Davis
here appeals for more money with which to free his last two children-
K. Pickard, op. cit., passim.; W. G. Hawkins, Lunsford Lane (Boston, 1863)
passim. ’ ' '

"Annals of Cleveland 1818-19)5. A Digest and Index of the Newspaper
Record of Events and Opinions in 200 volumes, written, edited and multi-
graphed by the workers of the Works Progress Administration of Ohio
(Cleveland, 1937-38) , XXXVIII, pt. I, pp. 278. 564, 571, 572; XXXIX, pt. 1
p. 456; XXXIX, pt. 2, pp. 323, 325. The Newbern, N. C. Journal of Sept. 19
1855, reported that a free Negro of its town, the Rev. Robert Green, was
then in New York trying to raise 12,500 with which to free his five children
— Franklin, op. cit., p. 31.

"See, as examples, the five volumes of Mrs. Catterall’s work, using the index
under “manumission by self-purchase”; D. Beasley, The Negro Trail
Blazers of California (Los Angeles, 1919) , p. 70; F. Bremer, The Homes
of the New World (2 vols., London, 1853) , I, p. 371; K. Bruce, Virginia
Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era (N. Y., 1931) , p. 241; B. Drew, A North-
Side View of Slavery (Boston, 1856) , pp. 149, 250, 252, 270; D. L. Dumond,
ed„ Letters of James G. Birney (2 vols., N. Y., 1938) , I, p. 487; J. H. Rus-
sell, The Free Negro in Virginia (Baltimore, 1913) , pp. 170 ff; A. Debo,
The Road to Disappearance (Norman, 1941), p. 115; of twenty Negro
leaders of Savannah, Georgia, questioned by Gen. Sherman in 1865, two
had bought their own freedom, one had bought his own and his wife’s

freedom, and the mother of a fourth had thus liberated herself. N Y

Tribune, Feb. 13, 1865, p. 5.

“See B. Brawley, Negro Heroes and Guilders (Chapel Hill, 1937), pp. 200,
273; C. Wesley, Richard Allen (Washington, 1935) , pp. 16, 59; E. F. Frazier,
The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago, 1939) , p. 209; K. E.
Pickard, op. cit., appendix; D. B. Porter, "Afro-American Writings," un-
published master's thesis, Columbia, 1932, p. 19; W. Still, Underground
Railroad Records (Phila., 1886) , pp. 175, 187; B. T. Washington, op. cit.,
I, p. 290; C. B. Roussfcve, The Negro in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1937) ,
pp. 51, 107; L. P. Jackson, Negro Office-Holders in Virginia, 1865-1895 (Nor-
folk, 1945) , pp. 4, 14, 28. The above is by no means an exhaustive list.
One might add, for example, Lott Cary, Venture Smith, and Gustavus Vasa.
Note, too, that both James W. C. Pennington and Frederick Douglass,
having escaped from slavery, still found it advisable to buy their legal
freedom, and both made effective use, in their agitational work, of the
bills of sale.

REFERENCE NOTES

*99

-Examples are: Georgia, 1801; Virginia, 1805; South Carolina, 1820. Catterall
I, p. 72; II, pp. 4, 268; III, p. 1. '

cxt '* p * ^ Wri 8 ht » °p- P* 79; Journal of Negro History, IX
(1924) , p. 41. 7

“ Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Cincinnati, 1876), p. 577.

-Letter dated Feb. 26, 1849, in C. E. Norton, Letters of James Russell Lowell
(2 vols., N. Y., 1894) , I, p. 151. Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher
Stowe, among others, bore similar testimony. The latter, in 1852, organized
a tour for a Mrs. Milly Edmundson embracing churches in Portland, Boston
Brooklyn, New York, and New Haven and resulting in funds sufficient to
free her two children. Among those contributing was the world-famous
Jenny Lind. — See C. E. Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston, 1891) ,
pp. 178 ff.

MILITANT ABOLITIONISM

1 A pacifistic and non-political Abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child, in a letter to
Ellis Gray Loring, dated New York, Jan. 25, 1842, asserted that a belief in
the propriety of political action would lead, inevitably, to the justification
of militant action. According to Mrs. Child: “Then politics and military
force not only seem allied together, when looked at through non-resistance

spectacles, but they really are allied together Both are founded in want

of faith in spiritual weapons; both seek to shape the inward by the outward;
both aim at controlling and coercing, rather than regenerating. . . . The time
will come when you and Wendell Phillips ... will confess that I looked at
this subject with candid discrimination, and not through the 'peeping-stone*
of non-resistance merely.”— Lydia Maria Child MSS, New York Public
Library.

•Herbert Aptheker, “The Quakers and Negro Slavery,” in The Journal of
Negro History (1940) , XXV, pp. 336, 338. Observe Jefferson's note to Gov-
ernor James Monroe of Virginia after the great Gabriel slave plot, urging
mercy in the punishment of the rebels: “The other states & the world at
large will forever condemn us if we indulge a principle of revenge, or go
one step beyond absolute necessity. They cannot lose sight of the rights of
the two parties, & the object of the unsuccessful one.” — Letter dated Monti-
cello. Sept. 20, 1800, in P. L. Ford, ed.. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (10
vols., N. Y., 1903) , VII, pp. 457-58.

• MS Council Journal, VIII, p. 13, South Carolina Historical Commission,
Memorial Building, Columbia, S. C.

4 L. Hartz, “Otis and Anti-Slavery Doctrine,” in The New England Quarterly
(1939) , XII, pp. 745-47. * 7

8 John Adams to William Tudor, dated Quincy, June 1, 1818, in C. F. Adams,
ed.. The Works of John Adams (10 vols., N. Y., 1850-56) , X, p. 315; incor-
reedy quoted by Hartz, op. cit. Observe the remark of Mrs. John Adams
in a letter to her husband, dated Boston, Sept. 22, 1774, telling of the dis-
covery of a slave plot: “I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the
province; it always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight
ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those
who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” — C. F. Adams, ed.. Letters
of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (2 vols., 3rd edit., Boston, 1841) ,
I. p. 24.

200

REFERENCE NOTES

•Quoted by A. M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revo -
lution (Durham, 1928), p. 119.

T Reprinted often, as Samuel Hopkins, Timely Articles on Slavery (Boston
1854). V ’

• The American Museum (Philadelphia, 1789) , VI, p. 80. Note the statement
of James Madison, made in 1783, in connection with the capture of a runa-
way slave belonging to him: “[I] cannot think of punishing him by trans-
portation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price
of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, & worthy
the pursuit of every human being.”— Quoted by Abbot E. Smith James
Madison (N. Y., 1937) , p. 221.

• Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (2 vols N Y

1945) , II, p. 1286. " ’ ”

10 W. F. Poole, Anti-Slavery Opinions Before the Year 1800 (Cincinnati, 1873) ,

u The American Museum , 1791, XII, pp. 299-300.

“David Rice, Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy (London,
1793) , p. 9. This pamphlet was originally issued in Philadelphia in 1792.

“Theodore Dwight, An Oration Spoken before the Connecticut Society for
the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden
in Bondage , Convened in Hartford on the 8th Day of May , A. D. 1794
pp. 20, 23. See M. S. Locke, Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction
of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808) (Boston
1901) , pp. 169-71.

14 Locke, op. cit., points out items of this nature in issues of Dec. 12, 1796, and
Aug. 28, 1797; see also, issues of Aug. 21, and Sept. 4, 1797.

“A Charge , Delivered to the African Lodge , June 24, 1797, at Menotomy, by
the Right Worshipful Master, Prince Hall ( n.p ., 1797) , pp. 11-12; B. Braw-
ny* The Negro Genius (N. Y., 1937) , pp. 30-31. An earlier charge, however,
is in large part devoted to advising against plots or rebellions. See A Charge
Delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge on the 25th of June, 1792,
at the Hall of Brother William Smith, in Charlestown, by the Right Wor
shipful Master, Prince Hall (Boston, 1792) , passim.

“Letters from Savannah dated Apr. 28, 1804, and two not dated, but same
approximate days, in the N. Y. Evening Post, May 8, 9, June 2, July 3, 1804.
U. B. Phillips mentions fears of rebellion in Georgia in 1804 — American
Negro Slavery (N. Y., 1918) , p. 476. A work published in Washington in
1804, by W. T. Washington, contains this sentence: “It is a melancholy re-
flection that while the energies of white men directed to shake off imposi-
tions, merely on trade, in every part of the world, meet with applause, the
smuggles of the blacks for liberty should meet with death if unsuccessful.” —
Political Economy Founded in Justice and Humanity, pp. 3-4.

IT St. Louis Enquirer, Oct. 20, 1819, in H. A. Trexler, Slavery in Missouri (Bal-
timore, 1914), p. 114. New England Federalist opposition to the War of
1812 provoked considerable denunciation of the slavery existing in the pre-
dominantly Democratic South. At times this led to expressions tending to
favor slave revolt. Thus, the Reverend Elijah Parish of Massachusetts, in
July, 1812, urged his congregation to “let the southern Heroes fight their
own battles, and guard . . . against the just vengeance of their lacerated

REFERENCE NOTES 201

slaves. . . .” — Quoted by Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American
Civilization (2 vols., N. Y., 1946) , I, p. 345.

“Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker, An Official Report of the Trials
of Sundry Negroes Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in
the State of South Carolina. . . (Charlestown, 1822) , appendix. The editor
of the Portland, Maine, Christian Mirror, John L. Parkhurst, demanded in
the issue of Sept. 2, 1825, the immediate abolition of slavery. He raised the
question of insurrection and, in regard thereto, said: “Calamitous as such a
struggle must be to our citizens, dreadful as must be the horrors of servile
war, we should regard even these as less to be deplored than the perpetual
existence of slavery in our land.” — C. M. Clark, American Slavery and
Maine Congregationalists (Bangor, 1940) , p. 28.

“ As originally issued this was called The Hope of Liberty Containing a Num-
ber of Poetical Pieces (Raleigh, 1829, Gales & Seaton) . It is mentioned by
G. G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 1937) , p. 826,
but this writer has not seen the original. He has seen a copy published in
Philadelphia in 1837, called Poems by a Slave which owed its existence to
the fact that an Abolitionist, Joshua Coffin, came across the original and
reprinted it. The work was published in the hope of raising money to pur-
chase Horton’s freedom, but this failed. The publisher. Gales, said he was
an “honest and industrious slave,” but Collier Cobb (An American Man
of Letters, reprint from University of North Carolina Magazine, 1909) , has
Horton merely loafing away his time, and feels that his anti-slavery poems
were “playing to the grand-stand.” This was based on the recollections of
white people in 19091 How a slave “played to the grand stand” by de-
nouncing slavery in a slave state is not clear.

» [Robert Alexander Young] The Ethiopian Manifesto issued in defence of
the black man's rights, in the scale of universal freedom (N. Y., 1829).
Compare with Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves (trans., by S.
Putnam, N. Y., 1946) , p. lOOn.

* Freedom's Journal, Dec. 18, 20, 1828; B. Gross, “Freedom’s Journal,” in The
Journal of Negro History (1932), XVII, p. 259n.; N. S. Chase. “The at-
titude of the Negro toward slavery’: a study in opinion, 1828-1850,” unpub-
lished master’s thesis, Howard University, 1936, pp. 14-16. David Walkers
son, Edwin G. Walker, was elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature
in 1866, one of the first Negroes so honored.

« [David] Walker's Appeal , in Four Articles together with a preamble to the
Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly to
those of the United States of America, written in Boston, State of Massa-
chusetts, September 28, 1829 (3rd ed., Boston, 1830) . The three editions
are in the Boston Public Library.

““A Colored Bostonian” reported in The Liberator, Jan. 22, 1831, that it was
believed Walker had been murdered. A rumor was current that some per-
son or persons in the South offered a large reward to the individual who
would kill him. Recently it has been asserted that Walker’s death was due to
“natural causes,” but this was not documented — R. A. Warner, New Haven
Negroes (New Haven, 1940) , p. 100.

* Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia, at an
annual session of the General Assembly begun and held in the Town of
Milledgeville, on Monday the second day of November, 1829 (MUledge-

202

REFERENCE NOTES

ville, 1830) , p. 353. See C. Eaton, "A dangerous pamphlet in the old South M
in The Journal of Southern History (1936) , II, pp. 327*28.

* J. H. Johnston, “Race relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South
1776-1860," unpublished doctorate, University of Chicago, 1937, p. 108*
L. P. Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia 1810
1860 (N. Y., 1942), p. 19n.

"U. B. Phillips, “The public archives of Georgia," in The Annual Report of
the American Historical Association for the Year 1903 (2 vols., Washington
1904) , I, p. 469. 6 *

“ The quoted words are those of Merle Curti, from The Learned Black-
smith, the Life and Journals of Elihu Burritt (N. Y., 1937) , p. H8n. Pro-
fessor Curti does not mention, however, the Walker pamphlet. That Elijah
safely reached the north appears in a letter from S. S. Jocelyn to W. L.
Garrison, dated New Haven, July 12, 1832. asking that The Liberator be sent
to Burritt at Berlin, Connecticut, “the gentleman who suffers so much on
acct of Walker’s pamphlet. I had an interview with him yesterday— -he is
a noble soul— lived 20 years in Geo. — has facts on the subject of slavery
most horrible." — MS Letters to Garrison, II, Boston Public Library.

* Niles’ Weekly Register (Baltimore) , Apr. 24, 1830, June 19, 1830, XXXVIII
pp. 157, 304.

“James F. McRae, Magistrate of Police, to Governor John Owen, dated
Wilmington, Aug. 7, 1830, in Governor’s Letter Book, Historical Commis-
sion, Raleigh.

*°L. D. Henry to Gov. Owen, in Governor’s Papers, vol. 60, N. C. Hist. Com-
mission. See Eaton, op. cit., pp. 330-31. A prominent North Carolinian,
Calvin Jones of Wake Forest, drawn from his “secluded retreat" by “the
great excitement and alarm that exists in several portions of the state as
to an apprehended insurrection of the slaves," urged the Governor, in a
letter of Dec. 28, 1830, among other things, to be sure to get hold of Walker
(in case, he added, he still was alive) . — Ibid.

81 Walker’s Appeal, op. cit., pp. 5-6, 9, 29. William Lloyd Garrison who did not
agree with Walker’s call for violence affirmed that he personally knew that

Walker himself wrote the Appeal The Liberator, Jan. 29, 1831. See C. G.

Woodson, The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written during
the Crisis, 1800-1860 (Washington, 1926) , p. 224. According to the Negro
Abolitionist, the Rev. Amos G. Beman, the Walker pamphlet was read to
gatherings of Negroes in Connecticut — R. A. Warner, op. cit., p. 100.

“ Original letter as well as a printed clipping are in MS Letters by Garrison,
I, Boston Public Library.

** The Liberator, July 23, 1831. See also letter signed “Consistency" on “The
Non-Resistance Doctrine," Ibid, July 9, 1831.

u Ibid., Sept 3, 1831. For a striking instance of what Garrison was lambasting
see “The Call of Poland" by Thomas Campbell, on the editorial page of the
Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 23, 1831 (two days after the start of Nat Turner’s
slave rebellion) , containing lines asking whether “the hell -mark of slave
must still blacken their name," and asserting:

The call of each sword upon Liberty’s aid
Shall be written in gore on the steel of its bladel

“ Robert Dale Owen in the Free Enquirer (N. Y.) , Sept. 23, 1831; the account
in The Liberator of the same day is also very full. A. B. Hart in Slavery

REFERENCE NOTES

203

and Abolition, 1831-41 (N. Y., 1906) , p. 236, incorrectly gives the date of
this incident as 1832.

“James Forten to Garrison, dated Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 1831, MS Letters to
Garrison, I, Boston Pub. Lib.

“This, all of which was printed except the month, day, signature, and the
word “great," which were written, was enclosed in a letter to Governor
Monfort Stokes of North Carolina by James Somervell, dated Warrenton,
Oct. 2, 1831. Mr. Somervell was postmaster of Warrenton, and stated that
he believed the same circular had been sent to every postmaster in the state.
Governor's Papers, vol. 62, Hist. Comm., Raleigh.

* Executive Papers, Virginia State Archives, State Library, Richmond; quoted
by J. H. Johnston, op. cit., pp. 260-67. Johnston thinks this may have been
the work of David Walker, but since it was written subsequent to Sept. 1,
1831, and since Walker’s death occurred several months earlier, he could not
have been its author.

» Garrison's pacifism greatly influenced Tolstoy, to whom, in turn, Gandhi is
indebted. See Leo Tolstoy, “Garrison and Non-Resistance," in The Inde-
pendent (1905) , LIX, pp. 881-83; H. R. Mussey, "Gandhi the Non-Re-
sistant," in The Nation (1930) , CXXX, p. 608.

*o The Liberator, Apr. 11, 18, 1835. See also George Thompson, Letters and
Addresses . . . 1834-35 (Boston, 1837) , pp. 58-60, 95. Certain remarks by
Mr. Thompson make him out to be, at this time, rather a conservative
than a radical anti-slavery man. Thus, at the 1835 New York Anti-Slavery
Society meeting he declared he opposed the immediate liberation of the
slaves without outside control. “All we ask is, that the control of the masters
over their slaves may be subjected to supervision, and to legal responsibility.’’
op. cit., p. 72. According to Claude G. Bowers, George Thompson “proposed
that the slaves should arise and cut their masters’ throats.”— The Party
Battles of the Jackson Period (Boston, 1928) , p. 434. Arthur Y. Lloyd says
the same thing, The Slavery Controversy (Chapel Hill, 1940), p. 115, and
cites James Schouler. That historian, however, merely stated that Thompson
used “imprudent language."— History of the United States under the Con-
stitution (rev. edit., 6 vols., N. Y., 1894) . IV, pp. 217-18. The fact is that
George Thompson did not advocate servile rebellion, and did not say what
Bowers and Lloyd claim he did. «
a Dated Ipswich, Aug. 20, 1835, in Letters to Garrison, V.

41 Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-
Slavery Society, with some account of the annual meeting, January 25, 1837
(Boston, 1837) , pp. xxvii, xxxv, xxxix. Yet Vernon Loggins, op. cit., p. 90,
citing Easton’s work, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character . . . Condition
of the Coloured People of the United States (Boston, 1837) , says it is,
as compared with Walker’s Appeal, “equally radical." A comparison of the
works does not substantiate this characterization.

“Dated Brookline. Nov. 30. 1837, in G. H. Barnes and D.L. Dumtmd,

of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Weld and Sarah Grtmke 18.2-1844
(2 vols.. N. Y.. 1934) , I, p. 486.

“Dated Hudson. N. Y., 12 mo 21st 1837, emphases in original. Letters to Gar-
rison VI. The same complaint came from Samuel J. May to Garrison in a
letter dated South Scituate. Dec. 26, 1837. and from the Buckingham Female

REFERENCE NOTES

204

Anti-Slavery Society in a letter to Garrison from J. P. Magill, dated Bucks
County, Pa., Jan. IS, 1838. — Letters to Garrison, VI, VII.

“George Hclmick to Garrison, dated Putnam, Feb. 3, 1838. Letters to Gar-
rison, VII.

“Quoted by V. Loggins, op. cit., p. 70. It is pertinent to observe that William
Lloyd Garrison, himself, was writing, privately, at this time: “I have relin-
quished the expectation that they [the slaveholders] will ever by mere moral
suasion, consent to emancipation of their victims.” — Garrison to the English
abolitionist, Elizabeth Pease, Nov. 6, 1837, in Garrison MSS, II, Boston Pub
Lib.

47 Hammond to Smith, Cherry Valley, May 18, 1839, in R. V. Harlow, Gerril
Smith Philanthropist and Reformer (N. Y., 1939) , p. 260.

48 N. Y. Daily Tribune, Jan. 29, 1841; W. S. Savage, The Controversy over the
Distribution of Abolition Literature 1830-1860 (Washington, 1938), p. 109

" The Liberator, Aug. 13, 1841; Loggins, op. cit., p. 79n.; Woodson, Mind, op.
cit., p. 252. In a letter from the Pennsylvania Abolitionist, Edward M. Davis,
written while on a visit to England and dated London 9 mo. 19, 1840, and
addressed to Elizabeth Pease, a leading British Abolitionist, there is en-
closed a printed tribute, including a portrait, to Joseph Cinque, leader of
the slaves who rebelled aboard the Amistad in 1839, as one deserving honor,
since he “prefers death to slavery.” — Letters to Garrison, IX.

60 Barnes and Dumond, eds., op. cit., II, pp. 911-12. See also D. L. Dumond,
Antislavery Origins of the Civil War in the United States (Ann Arbor'
1939), p. 111.

a G. W. Julian, The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago, 1892) , pp. 118-19;
J. R. Giddings, Speeches in Congress (Boston, 1853) , pp. 19, 22, 24; D. L.
Dumond, op. cit., p. 99. An interesting eulogy of Madison Washington,
leader of the slave rebels aboard the Creole, written by Frederick Douglass
and entitled “The Heroic Slave,” appeared in Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs
for Freedom (Boston, 1853) , I, pp. 174- 239.

“James McCune Smith, “Sketch of the life of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet,”
in A Memorial Discourse; by Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, delivered in the
hall of the House of Representatives, Washington, D. C., on Sabbath, Febru-
ary 12, 1865 (Phila., 1865) , pp. 17-68; W. M. Brewer, in The Journal of
Neg?o History (1928) , XIII, pp. 36-52; C. G. Woodson, Negro Orators and
their Orations (Washington, 1925) , pp. 149-156; V. Loggins, op. cit., p. 192;
B. Brawley, op. cit., p. 49. Walker’s Appeal and Garnet’s Address were issued
in one volume in 1848. Brewer, Loggins, and Woodson state that John
Brown paid for its publication. In 1849 a convention of Ohio Negroes re-
solved “that five hundred copies of Walker’s Appeal and Henry H. Garnet's
Address to the Slaves be obtained in the name of the Convention, and
gratuitously circulated.” — State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio,
Convened at Columbus, Jan. 10-13, 1849 (Oberlin, 1849) p. 18.

“D. L. Dumond, ed.. Letters of James Gillespie Birney 1831-1857 (2 vols.,
N. Y., 1938) , II, p. 742.

u This information is given in B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (2
vols., N. Y., 1909) , II, p. 158; and H. Whittaker, “The Negro in the Aboli-
tionist Movement 1830-1850,” unpublished master's thesis, Howard Univer-
sity, 1935, p. 63, but neither cites sources. Washington, who seems to have

REFERENCE NOTES 205

known Dickson, states he served in the Union Army, and, following the
Civil War, was active in establishing Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City
Missouri.

“J. G. Birney to W. E. Austen, et. al., dated Lower Saginaw, Michigan, Feb.
23, 1844, in Dumond, ed., op. cit., II, p. 790.

86 Francis Jackson to Governor George N. Briggs, Boston, July 4, 1844, in
The Anti-Slavery Examiner (N. Y., 1845) , XI, p. 123. Mr. Jackson was' re-
iterating the resolution adopted in 1841 by the American Anti-Slavery So-
ciety. He was not, and it did not, however, advocate slave rebellion. It did
denounce the obligation to suppress such rebellion. According to Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, his friend, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who had
been active in Greek and Polish revolutions, had asserted in 1844, “that
in his opinion some movement of actual force would yet have to be made
against slavery, and that but for the new duties he had assumed by his
marriage (1843) he should very likely undertake some such enterprise
himself.” — Contemporaries, (Boston, 1899) , pp. 294-95.

57 Herman Schluter, Lincoln, Labor and Slavery (N. Y., 1913), pp. 58-59;
C. H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States 1850-1925 (N. Y., 1927) ',
p. 73. A Boston workingmen’s paper. The New Era of Industry, July Tl',
1848, declared, “Slavery must be extinguished. We go for direct and
internecine war with the monster.”— Quoted by N. Ware, The Industrial
Worker 1840-1860 (Boston, 1924) , p. 226.

88 Such activity on the part of Indians and fugitive slaves had recently
required the United States Army seven years (1836-43) to overcome. As
has been shown guerrilla warfare waged by outlying runaway Negroes
was everywhere a regular part of the slave institution.

w Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, 1882), p. 217.

“Julian, op. cit., p. 243.

“Woodson, Orators, p. 191.

82 O. B. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith (N. Y., 1879), p. 190.

“Reported by William C. Nell in The Liberator, Dec. 10, 1852. Earlier
“A Colored American” (Henry Bibb?) published a pamphlet the title
of which referred to the Vesey martyrs as “patriots.” — The Late Contem-
plated Insurrection in Charleston, S. C., with the Execution of Thirty -Six
of the Patriots (N. Y., 1850) .

“Dated Philadelphia May 14, 1852, in The Liberator, May 21, 1852, and
in Woodson, Mind, p. 293. Martin Robison Delany studied medicine at
Harvard, served as a newspaper editor for several years in Pittsburg, and
was a Major in the Union Army. See Frank A. Rollin (Frances E. R.
Whipper) , Life and Public Service of Martin R. Delany (Boston, 1868) .

“Jabez D. Hammond, to Smith, Feb. 28, 1852, in Harlow, op. cit., p. 304.

“Julia Griffiths, ed., op. cit., I, p. 34, italics in original.

87 Loguen to Garrison, April 28, 1854, in Woodson, Mind, p. 267. This
individual act of defiance of slavocratic law by Loguen was typical of
the statements and behavior of the Negro people north of the Mason-
Dixon line, i.e., of those who, in a physical sense, were able to act in
this manner. It is typical, too, of the expressions emanating from
collective bodies of Negroes. For example, a meeting of Cleveland Negroes
resolved, in Sept., 1850: “We will exert our influence to induce slaves

REFERENCE NOTES

206

to escape from their masters, and will protect them from recapture
against all attempts, whether lawful or not, to return them to slavery "
Cleveland Daily True Democrat, Sept. 30, 1850. By the 1850’s outstanding
Negroes like Dr. Charles H. Langston of Ohio publicly declared that
"circumstances being favorable" he would be happy to see the slaves
assert their freedom "and cut their masters’ throats if they attempt
again to reduce them to slavery.” Minutes of the State Convention of
the Colored Citizens of Ohio... 1851 (Columbus, 1851), p. n. Similar
sentiments were expressed thereafter by men like William Howard Day
and John Mercer Langston— See Proceedings of a Convention of the
Colored Men of Ohio . . . 1858 (Cincinnati, 1858) , p. 17.

-Julia Griffiths, ed., op. cit., II (Auburn, 1854), p. 132. The same volume
contains a long eulogistic poem on the Haitian rebel, Vincent <W bv a
Negro, George B. Vashon.

* N - semi-weekly Tribune , June 16, 1854, quoted by C. Wesley, op . cit.,

"Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery , p. 1.
n Letter in Syracuse Journal, May 31, 1856, in Harlow, op. cit., p. 350.

” Douglass’ Rochester paper of Nov. 28, 1856, quoted in William Chambers
American Slavery and Colour (London, 1857), p. 174. Chambers, in
introducing Douglass' remarks asserts that very few Abolitionists held
this viewpoint, but the evidence herewith presented refutes that idea.

" Dated Hamilton, Canada, Jan. 5, 1857, in William Still, Underground
Railroad Records (rev. edit., Phila., 1886), pp. 191, 200.

74 A printed copy of this circular will be found on page 73 of the collection
of Lysander Spooner manuscripts in the Boston Public Library. Several
handwritten drafts are also there. There is a brief sketch of Spooner in
the Dictionary of American Biography, but the manuscripts in the Boston
Library are not mentioned, nor is this very interesting episode in his
life, with which those papers very largely deal.

78 The Boston Courier, Jan. 28, 1859, reporting the contents of the circular,
stated it had received copies from a friend in Georgia, and from an
unnamed Congressman. It was noticed, too, in the N. Y. Tribune, Jan.
28, 1859, and the Boston Post of the next day. The latter paper and the
Boston Courier of Jan. 31, 1859, thought the circular to be a joke, or,
in the language of the day, a “quiz.” The Boston Atlas and Bee of Jan.
31, 1859, decided it was “too absurd to be treated seriously and too silly
to be laughed at.”— Clippings in the Spooner MSS; that of the Tribune
enclosed in a letter to Spooner from Hinton R. Helper, dated New York,
Jan. 31, 1859.

74 So declared Spooner in a letter to Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia,
signed “The Author of the Circular,” dated Nov. 2, 1859. He wrote in order
to dear Brown of any suspidon of being the author for, “I apprehend
that the Circular may be considered more disrespectful, and insulting to
slaveholders personally, than Brown’s enterprise itself. . . .” — Spooner MSS.

77 Dated Dec. 25, 1858. This was probably the printed circular, for Francis
Jackson, in a letter of December 3, already referred to it as printed.
French had formerly been assodated with the New Hampshire leader,
Nathaniel P. Rogers, in the publication of the Herald of Freedom.

207

REFERENCE NOTES

n Dated New York City, Oct. 7, 1858.

n Dated Boston, Dec. 3, 1858.

•Dated New York, Dec. 18, 1858.

“This referenee is to Protasor Benjamin S. Hedrick, once of the University
of North Carolina, who was forced to leave the South in 1856 because
of his free-soil views and his expressed preference for John C. Frdmont
in the Presidential election of that year. A good brief account of this is
in Clement Eaton. Freedom of Thought in the Old South (Durham,
1940), pp. 202-04. As appears in a letter from Helper to Spooner of
Jan. 31, 1859, requesting another copy of the circular. Professor Hedrick
kept the one Spooner originally sent him. On Oct. 28, 1859, Helper asked
Spooner to send a copy of his letter of Dec 18, 1858, opposing the
circular, in order to help convince those who suspected him of complicity
with John Brown of his non-involvement.

“Dated Nov. 30, 1858.

“ Dated Jan. 8, 1859.

M Dated Jan. 16, 1859. The information concerning Mann is in J. R.
French’s letter to Spooner from Painesville, Dec. 25, 1858. Mann wrote
in pendl at the end of his letter, “Use, as you choose.”

“ The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States
(N. Y., 1859) .

M Ibid., pp. 10, 129. In view of later historical writing, it is interesting
to note these words in this work: “The second American Revolution has
begun. Kansas was its Lexington...” p. 300. Redpath wrote the first
biography of John Brown, and later published other volumes induding
a collection of the speeches of Wendell Phillips. For his relations with
Lincoln, see Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, The War Years (4 vols ,
N. Y., 1939) I, p. 578.

“Redpath, op. cit., p. 306; see also pp. 84, 299.

88 W. S. Heywood, ed.. Autobiography of Adin Ballou (Lowell, 1896), pp.
417-22. Ballou was particularly shocked at the fact that the Massachu-
setts Anti-Slavery Society adopted a resolution praising Brown, and that
William Lloyd Garrison spetifically assodated himself with that act.

“Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips: The Agitator (N. Y., 1890), p. 299;
R. V. Harlow, op. cit., pp. 410/f.; O. G. Villard, John Brown (N. Y.,
1909) , p. 323.

*°L. T. Jones, The Quakers of Iowa (Iowa City, 1914) , p. 197.

w H. S. Canby, Thoreau (Boston, 1939), chap. XXIV. Mr. Canby aptly
states (p. 391) : “Subtly, slowly, as is happening with many idealists
in the twentieth century, the belief in justified violence had been
capturing Thoreau ’s mind. Passive resistance was not enough in a state
that had ceased to recognize human rights and was over-riding personal
integrity.”

“ Martyn, op. cit., pp. 295-96.

“ The Liberator, Jan. 10, 1851.

94 Henry C. Wright, The Natick Resolution; or, Resistance to Slaveholders
the Right and Duty of Southern Slaves and Northern Freemen (Boston,

REFERENCE NOTES

208

1859) , passim. On the day of Brown’s execution, Wright, in a letter,
pointed out to Governor Wise that the state seal of Virginia itself
attested Brown’s righteousness. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts
was present at the Natick meeting but denied, on the floor of the Senate,
Dec. 6, 1859, that he favored rebellion.

“Letter dated Jan. 22, 1860, in A. Nevins, Hamilton Fish , The Inner
History of the Grant Administration (N. Y„ 1936) , p. 77.

“W. E. Smith, ed., The American Civil War, An Interpretation, by Carl
Russell Fish (London, N. Y., 1937) , pp. 53-54.

97 Garrison to Redpath, Dec. 1, 1860, in MS letters by Garrison, V.

“Reported in the N. Y. Evening Post, Sept. 27, 1860.

“See, Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement
for the Abolition of Slavery (N. Y. f 1894) ; T. W. Higginson, Contem-
poraries (Boston, 1899) , p. 264.

100 Speech of John Quincy Adams in the Joint Resolution for Distributions
to the Distressed Fugitives from Indian Hostilities in the States of
Alabama and Georgia delivered in the House of Representatives, May
25, 1836 (Washington, 1836) , pp. 5, 7.

101 Letter dated Oct. 15, 1860, in Principia (N. Y.) , Nov. 3, 1860. Note an
editorial in the N. Y. Weekly Tribune, Dec. 13, 1856, in which are these
words: “They ask for more territory to be subject to the taskmaster and
his cruelties, to the slave and his insurrections. . .What claim will the
South have on the North when insurrections do come?"

103 The Liberator, May 24, 1861. In Jan., 1861, Gerrit Smith went to Canada
to protest the attempt by Missouri to extradite a fugitive slave, John
Anderson, on a charge of murder, the Negro having killed his master
who tracked him to Ohio. Smith based the defense on, as he saw it,
man’s right to be free. In killing the person who attempted to enslave
him, the Negro had done, said Smith, “a manly, heroic deed, entitling
the man to praise and not to punishment." The extradition request was
denied — Harlow, op. cit., p. 425; Frothingham, op. cit., p. 116. Similar
ideas recur even in non-Abolitionist papers. For example, the Cleveland
Leader (Jan. 25, 1858) , in reporting the case of a Kentucky slave who
had recently killed his master while the latter was whipping the Negro’s
wife, commented: "We cannot blame this negro for obeying one of the
first laws of nature, self-defense ..."

108 N. Y. Daily Tribune, May 11, 1861.

104 Ibid., June 16, 1861.

106 Letter from T. Bourne, Ibid., July 27; from M. T. V., Aug. 3; editorial,
Sept. 19, 1861.

loe MS in collection labeled "The Negro in the the Military Service of the
United States," eight volumes of manuscripts, II, p. 827, located in the
National Archives, War Records Branch, Washington. So far as has yet
been discovered, the first suggestion to arm the Negroes, specifying they
be free, came from one Major Burr Porter, of the "Ottoman Army, 3
campaigns," in a letter to Secretary of War Cameron, dated Washington,
Apr. 16, 1861. On Apr. 23, 1861, the Negroes of Boston held a mass
meeting, requested that they be armed, and pledged that 50,000 Negroes

REFERENCE NOTES

209

would come forth at once to help suppress the slaveholders’ assault. On
the same day a Negro employed by the U. S. Senate, Jacob Dodson,
wrote to Cameron that he knew "of some three hundred" Negroes in
Washington anxious to get into uniform; but this offer was rejected by
the Secretary six days later. Thereafter a veritable flood of similar
demands descended upon the Lincoln Administration. See the Boston
Journal, Apr. 24, 1861, and letters in MS Collection as cited above in
this note, II, pp. 803, 806.

See, as examples, N. Y. Daily Tribune, Jan. 15, 20, 1862; P. G. and E. Q.
Wright, Elizur Wright (Chicago, 1937) , p. 217.

108 N. Y. Daily Tribune, Jan. 1, 1863. During the war years an occasional
pacifistic Abolitionist raised his voice in protest. See, for example, the
letter from A. Brooke, dated Marlboro’, Ohio, Feb. 20, 1864, in The
Liberator, Mar. 11, 1864, and the reply thereto by W. S. Flanders of
Cornville, Maine, dated Mar. 16, 1864; Ibid., Apr. 8, 1864.

i» Many who entered the South did so in order to help slaves flee. The
existence of the possibility of gaining liberty via flight acted as a safety
valve and may well have served to cut down the number of mass
uprisings.

110 For information on this see A. M. Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer (Toronto,
1893), passim .; Annie Abel and F. Klingberg, A Side-Light on Anglo-
American Relations (N. Y., 1927), p. 258; D. L. Dumond, ed., op. cit.,

I, pp. 388n., 527; Harlow, op. cit., p. 275; J. W. Coleman, Jr., Slavery
Times in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1940) , pp. 142j?.; Eliza Wigham, The
Anti-Slavery Cause in America and its Martyrs (London, 1863) , pp. 63,
64, 81. Torrey’s work led to his being sentenced to six years’ imprisonment
in Baltimore in 1844, but he died in jail in 1846. See his letter to J. M.
McKim, dated Baltimore Jail, Nov. 29, 1844, asking that McKim thank
several Philadelphia Negroes who had sent money for his defense. MS
Letters to Garrison, XIV. Calvin Fairbank aided Lewis Hayden to escape
and for this was jailed in Lexington, Ky., in 1848. Hayden learned that
his owner would sign, for $650, a petition to pardon Fairbank, and so
within sixty days Hayden raised the money, by public and private appeals.
In August, 1849, Fairbank was freed. In 1851 he was sentenced to fifteen
years’ imprisonment, again for aiding in the liberation of Negroes. For
thirteen years he rotted in a Kentucky prison, until pardoned in 1864.
See an undated manuscript signed by Francis Jackson and Ellis G. Loring
in MS Letters to Garrison, XVIII; and The Liberator, May 13, 1864.
p. 80. In 1879 Garrison and Phillips were attempting to raise money
for Fairbank who was absolutely destitute. N. Y. Daily Tribune, Jan. 2,
1879, p. 2.

m Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (London, Cincinnati, 1876) , pp. 428-46.
m See Earl Conrad, Harriet Tubman (Washington. 1943).

US W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (N. Y., 1899) , pp. 28, 152.
Not a few residents of the South, Negro and white, aided in this work.
See 1 H. Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia (Baltimore, 1913), p-
165n.; Helen T. Catterall. Judicial Cases Concerning the Negro and
American Slavery (5 vols., Washington. 1926-35) . I. PP- 188, 216-1. 247,
441; II. pp. 67, 511; III, pp- 187, 200; IV, pp. 222, 232.

210

REFERENCE NOTES

U4 Dated Charleston, S. C., Feb. 1, 1844, in MS Letters to Garrison, XIV.

“■This refers to the Abolitionist and author, Lydia Maria Child, whose
Appeal for that Class of Americans Called Africans , published in Boston
in 18S3, was particularly popular and influential. A good brief sketch of
this lady will be found in Higginson, op. cit., pp. 108-41.

u * Aug. 1, 1834 was the day upon which the act emancipating the slaves
of the British West Indies took effect.

m Above the word “plantation" in another hand is written “country seat.”

NEGRO CASUALTIES IN THE CIVIL WAR

1 The War of the Rebellion. Official Records of the Union and Confed-
erate Armies (128 serial volumes, Washington, 1880-1901), Ser. Ill, vol.
V, p. 665n.— hereafter cited as ORA. The Provost Marshal General's full
report appears in House Executive Document No. 1, 39th Cong. 1st Sess.
(Washington, 1866) , Vol. IV, parts 1 and 2.

■William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861-1865
(Albany, 1889) , p. 574.

8 Ibid.

‘Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx (Hartford, 1888), p. 123. Wilson
was a member of the 2nd Regiment of Louisiana Native Guards, and, later,
of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He makes
dear his belief that the numbers involved in this behavior ran into the
thousands, and asserts: “An order was issued [in the Department of the
Gulf] which aimed to correct the habit and to prevent the drawing, by
collusion, of the dead man's pay."

6 Conveniently presented in Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of
the Rebellion (Des Moines, 1908) , p. 18. These revised figures represent an
increase of about 5,000 over the casualty total embodied in the Report
of the Secretary of War for 1866 (Washington, 1866) , p. 89.

•Actually the latter figure should be increased considerably for there were
3,306 deaths from causes not stated upon the service records, and the
vast majority of these were due, in all probability, to disease. See W. F.
Fox, op. cit., p. 529.

r A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1865
(N. Y., 1888, Harper) , p. 324.

• When Negro regiments were first formed it was customary to have white
men in the higher non-commissioned posts, particularly on the regimental
staffs. These men were generally, in time, replaced by Negroes, but what

their casualties may have been, or how those casualties were reported

whether as white troops or as part of the Colored units’ totals— is not
clear. On July 11, 1863, General Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General
of the Army, had instructed a Lieutenant K. Knox, on recruiting duty,
that ...the Non-commissioned Staff of Regiments and 1st Sergeants of
Companies of Colored Troops, are to be in all cases white men. but
in his report to Secretary Stanton, March 25, 1864, he indicated that
Negroes were steadily replacing white non-commissioned officers. Thomas’
report is in House Executive Document No. 83, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 29.
The letter to Lieutenant Knox is on page 1407 of the massive collection

211

REFERENCE NOTES

. uiaiiujvi

. - , 1T , , r 1 * unpnniea material compiled

by Elon A. Woodward, Chief of the Colored Troops Division, for
Brigadier General Richard C. Drum, Adjutant General, U.S.A., in 1888.
This is entitled The Negro in the Military Service of the United States-
a compilation of official records , state papers, historical extracts etc
relating to his military status and service from the date of his introduction
into the British North American Colonies, and is located in the War
Records Office, National Archives, Washington. While there are some
disappointing features to this collection (for example, at times the source
of extracts is not given, or given in so fragmentary a manner that even
the very efficient staff of workers at the War Records Office are unable
to locate the original items) it contains about five thousand pages of
handwritten, typed, and printed source material — about ninety per cent

of it on the Negro in the Civil War — and forms a veritable mine

hitherto unused to this writer’s knowledge, which will repay study by
all interested in the history of the Negro or of the United States. On
April 25, 1888, Secretary of War W. C. Endicott recommended to the
Speaker of the House that Congress print 2,000 copies of this collection
(in three volumes) at a cost of about $7,000, but Congress decided it
could not spare this sum of money for such a purpose. See House Ex.
Doc. No. 284, 50th Cong., 1st Sess. This collection will be cited hereafter
simply as Woodward.

Another error of a contrary nature repeatedly made in handling data
on the Negro troops of the Civil War is the assumption that all the
officers of Negro regiments who suffered casualties were white men (see,
for example, W. Fox, op. cit., pp. 53, 523) , but this is false. There were,
of course, Negro commissioned officers during the Civil War, and the
death of at least one, Capt. Andrew Cailloux, while heroically leading
Company E of the 73rd U. S. Colored Infantry (formerly the 1st Louisiana
Native Guards) at Port Hudson, La., on May 27, 1863, is well known.
See Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the U. S. Army . . .
1861-65 (Washington, 1867, 8 vols.) VIII, p. 247; Williams, op. cit., p. 215;
Wilson, op. cit., p. 214/. Pertinent, too, is the fact that the father of the
famous William Monroe Trotter of Boston, James Monroe Trotter, was
wounded at Honey Hill, S. C., on Nov. 30, 1864, when a commissioned
(though not yet mustered) 2d lieutenant in the 55th Regiment of
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. See [Charles B. Fox] Record of the
Service of the 55th Regiment . . . (Cambridge, 1868) , p. 108.

•Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America
(Boston, 1901), p. 9.

10 A study of individual Negro regimental losses, as shown, for example,
in monthly accounts of activities (occurring frequently in Woodward)
will show this ratio of 2.75:1 to be conservative. To cite a few instances
of better known engagements: the 49th U. S. Colored Infantry lost, at
Milliken’s Bend, June 7, 1863, 28 officers and men killed, 66 wounded;
in storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts lost 34
killed and 146 wounded, and 92 captured or missing; at Honey Hill, S. C.,
the same regiment lost three killed and 38 wounded and four missing; in the
Battle of the Mine, Petersburg, of July 30, 1864, General Ferrero,
commanding the 4th Division, made up of nine Negro regiments, reported

2 1 2 REFERENCE NOTES

the next day 173 killed and 676 wounded, as well as a large number still
unaccounted for.

“ E , XCC D0C NO ' *' 39th Con «- lst Sess - vo1 ' IV - P- 83 (serial number

1251). Later revisions, while considerable as already shown, would not
seriously affect these figures in a relative sense. A point to be noted
here is the fact that many of the so-called "white" Volunteer regiments
actually contained a goodly number of Negro soldiers. This will be
developed in detail later.

“ VV. Fox, op. tit., p. 49. A few Negro troops were organized, semiofficially
m the summer and fall of 1862 in South Carolina, Louisiana and Kansas’
but they were not enrolled, on a mass scale, until the latter months of
1863 and early in 1864.

U ?866) r *p ° f m SeCTetary ° f WaT ’ With accom P an y in g papers (Washington,

u Facts obtained by checking all regimental losses as detailed in W. Fox,
op. cit., passim. The white regiments suffering very heavy losses were
the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery with 683, the 2d Pennsylvania Heavy
Artillery with 616, and the lst Vermont Heavy Artillery with 576. A heavy
artillery regiment, frequently used as infantry, and always in the thick of
the fighting, had 12 companies rather than the 10 of an infantry regiment,
so that, with some 250 more men, its numerical casualty rate was
normally greater than that of infantry units of comparable service. It is
important to note that the earliest organization date for the above-
mentioned Negro units was August, 1863, while the latest date for the
white units listed was September, 1862.

15 House Exec. Doc. No. 1, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 1249, p. 73.

“T® M fj° r „ C ’ T - Christensen, Asst. Adj. Gen., dated New Orleans, July 18,
1864, in Woodward, pp. 2640-41. J 7

” See also - House Exec - D °c. No. 83. (1865) , 38th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 29.

* Tl 16 . SIX SCrVlng in hos P ita ls in the capital were Charles B. Purvis
Alpheus Tucker, John Rapier, William Ellis, Anderson R. Abbott, and

wi!h‘ a ,h ^ i/°« hn r V ; De Grassee served briefly as an assistant surgeon
with the 35th U. S. Colored Infantry, while Alexander T. Augusta was
originally assigned to the 7th USCI. See text for further data on Augusta
(breveted a Lieutenant Colonel on March 13, 1865 ) ; and G W Williams
op. cit., p. 143. ’

18 Woodward, p. 1171.

"'“rT leUer is Si * ned ^ J- B - McPherson, E. M.

Pease, C. C. Topliff, M. O. Carter, J. O Dounde, J. Morse, and H. Grange.

21 Letter from Col. James A. Hardie, Inspector General of the Army, to
Senator Wilson, Apr. 15, 1864, in Woodward, p. 2483.

“Sec. 12, Public Act No. 166, in ORA, Ser. HI. vol. 2, p. 218. Actually, of
course, Negroes were already so employed by various agencies of the
government, and were regularly enlisted personnel of the Navy.

* “‘S.* 0 ®!”' 1 ' datCd Was h*ngton. Mar. 31, 1863, in full in Woodward,
pp. 1148-50, in part in G. Williams, op. tit., p. 106. Grant, in reply (dated

of'^Ne^’ ^ pn i 19, i863), assured Halleck that he would make use
ot the Negroes. In General Order No. 25, issued three days later, he

REFERENCE NOTES

213

called this to the attention of all officers, and asserted that the employment
of Negroes as soldiers would aid in “removing prejudice ” (Woodward
pp. 1190, 1194.) From Vicksburg, July 24, 1863, Grant informed Halleck
that he intended using Negro troops for labor on that city's works He
added: “The negro troops are easier to preserve discipline among than
our white troops, and I doubt not will prove equally good for garrison
duty. All that have been tried have fought bravely." (Woodward, p.1429) .

84 Woodward, p. 1586.

* Major G. L. Stearns to Stanton, ORA, Ser. IV, vol. 3, p. 840.

29 Woodward, p. 1607. The items from Tennessee probably refer, in
particular, to Negro workers rather than soldiers, but the evidence as to
sentiment and conduct is clear.

27 Woodward, p. 1766.

* Capt. R. T. Auchmuty to Col. Townsend, Dec. 20, 1863, in Woodward, 1854.

29 Brig. Gen. J. S. Wadsworth to Brig. Gen. L. Thomas, Dec. (?) , 1863, in
Woodward, p. 1816.

80 Colonel Morgan, letter dated Gallatin, Tenn., Dec. 6, 1863, in G. Williams,
op. cit., p. 162.

n Letter dated Port Hudson, La., Mar. 7, 1864, in Woodward, p. 2412.

83 Maj. G. L. Stearns to Wilson, Nashville, Mar. 4, 1864, in Woodward
pp. 2404-05.

88 In Woodward, pp. 3525-28.

84 An enlisted man of another Negro regiment (the 54th Mass.) engaged
in this labor, wrote: “For four months we have been steadily working
night and day under fire. And such work! Up to our knees in mud half
the time . . . Letter to Theodore Tilton, sent by him from New York
on Dec. 12, 1863, to the Boston Journal . See Luis F. Emilio, History of
the Fifty-Fourth Regiment . . . (Boston, 1891), p. 136.

88 Order No. 21, dated Louisville, Ky., June 14, 1864. Woodward, p. 2621.

“Italics mine. — H. A. It is not likely that a junior officer would complain
to his own senior officer of the unjust act of the latter with the
expectation that this complaint would go to higher headquarters.

“Adjutant General L. Thomas to Stanton, Nov. 7, 1864, in House Exec
Doc. No. 83, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 29.

“General Order No. 39, Department of the Cumberland, Maj. Gen. T.
Chattan, Mar. 2, 1864, in Woodward, p. 2403; for another example, dated
Feb. 19, 1864, see Ibid., p. 2385.

* Dyer. op. cit., pp. 1733, 1734, 1738; Woodward, p. 3619. These “fatigue"
regiments are not to be confused with the so-called “invalid" or "veteran
reserve" units composed of meritorious men somewhat incapacitated in
service but able to perform non-combat duties, as those required of
guards and attendants. The total number of men and officers so serving
numbered about 31,000 and some of these were Negroes. Gen. Thomas
authorized John Eaton, Jr., to organize the first Negro invalid regiment
on Sept. 26, 1863. See Woodward, p. 1606; House Exec. Doc. No. 83, 38
Cong., 2d Sess., p. 57; Exec. Papers, lst Sess., 39th Cong. (ser. no. 1252) ,

p. 110.

REFERENCE NOTES

214

"Thus, an enlisted man of the 54th Mass, in his letter of late 1865 (already
dted, see note 34) complained that his work schedule was “causing
the wearing and tearing out of more than the volunteer's yearly
allowance of clothing" and that they were "denied time to repair and
wash (what we might by that means have saved)

u W. Fox, op. cit., p. 524.

** Woodward, p. 2475. Five regiments are enumerated as suffering particu-
larly from this condition.

“Gen. Thomas to Col. Townsend, Apr. 8 , 1864, Woodward, p. 2477. Thomas
added that he desired this impressed upon the Commanding General,
because the Negroes "on every occasion of conflict have shown themselves
most worthy of confidence, and I think the time has fully arrived for
placing in their hands the best arms."

“Gen. Ullman to Senator Wilson, Port Hudson, Dec. 4, 1863. Woodward, p.
1784. Ullman’s troops had played an important part, a few months before
in the assault, siege, and capture of Port Hudson, and had suffered
heavily. Note also Col. Montgomery’s report that his men (34th U. S. Col-
ored Infantry) who saw heavy fighting in South Carolina possessed "no
opportunity of seeing [i.e., caring for] their guns except by candle light"
because of their constant assignment on fatigue details. Ibid., p. 2528.

“Hawkins to Sec. of War, Feb. 7. 1864; Asst. Sec. of War A. A. Davis to
Hawkins, Mar. 2, 1864, in Woodward, p. 2401.

“ Col. Shaw to Gov. Andrew of Mass., dated St. Helena Island, S. C., July 2,
1863, Woodward, p. 2416.

a Testimony before American Freedmen’s Commission, May, 1864, Woodward
p. 2576.

“Dana to Stanton, dated "below Vicksburg," June 7, 8 , 1863, in ORA, Ser.
I, vol. XXIV, pt. 1 , p. 95, and pt. 2, p. 446. According to the annual
return of one of the regiments in this battle, "...very few of its men
had ever before that day fired a gun — they having received their arms
but the night before."— 1st Miss. Vols., A. D., later the 51st U. S. C. T.
This regiment had but 150 men at this battle, of whom 24 were killed and
wounded— Woodward, p. 2143. See also ORA, Ser. I, vol. XXIV, pt. 2,
PP- 455-56, where it appears that a request for more weapons and
artillery made just before the battle was refused.

"Lt. Col. J. C. Chadwick, letter dated June 13, 1864, Woodward, p. 3129.
The regiment sustained 12 casualties in this brief encounter.

“Brig. Gen. Ullman, commanding 1st Div. Corps d’Afrique, Port Hudson,
La., Dec. 4, 1863, to Senator Wilson, Woodward, p. 1784.

This, by the way, was important in explaining the chronic shortage of
junior officers for Negro units. See, for example, Gen. Banks to Sec.
Stanton, Oct. 26, 1863, in ORA, Ser. I, vol. XXVI, pt. 1 , p. 776.

“ Brig. Gen. J. Wadsworth to the Adj. Gen., Dec., 1863, Woodward, p. 1816.

Brig. Gen. D. Ullman to Senator H. Wilson, Dec. 4 , 1863, Woodward, p.
1786. r

“Letter dated Norfolk, Feb. 18, 1863, in Woodward, pp. 1100 - 01 . Several
resignations of officers followed the enlistment of Negroes, and the freeing
of slaves. Gen. Banks of the Department of th« Gulf, in General Order

REFERENCE NOTES 2 1 5

No. 18, Feb. 14, 1863, finally ordered the dishonorable discharge of
one such officer, and threatened similar treatment for others. Upon
learning of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation one Army
officer said "he would like to cut the damned black heart out of the
President" for having written it. See Woodward, pp. 854. 1068 1105
1106, 1318.

“Fred A. Shannon, The Organization and Administration of the Union
Army (2 vols., Cleveland, 1928) , I, p. 226.

“ As was done by Lt. Col. A. W. Benedict of the 4th Regt. Corps d’Afrique
whose men finally mutinied in Dec., 1863— ORA, Ser. I, Vol. XXVI,
pt. 1, pp. 456/f.; B. I. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven!
1938) , p. 317.

57 Woodward, pp. 1658-59.

“Woodward, p. 2674.

“Circular, dated Nashville, Feb. 15, 1864, signed by Capt. R. D. Mussey,
Woodward, p. 2383.

*° Paragraph II, General Order No. 26, Feb. 18, 1864, Woodward, p. 2384.

“Another motive behind changing the plans was perfectly legitimate

many of the Negro troops had seen but little, and some no, actual
fighting prior to this major attack upon veteran soldiers.

“See Battle Report 457, Col. Hallowell to Gen. Seymour, Nov. 7, 1863, in
Woodward, pp. 2221-23; Emilio, op. cit., pp. 75-88. Gen. Seymour, in
over all command of this operation, was further criticized for the piece-
meal fashion in which he committed the other forces at his disposal, thus
losing that without which an assault ever fails — massed concentrated
power.

“Gov. S. I. Kirkwood to Halleck, Aug. 5, 1862, in Woodward, p. 933. A
current "joke" of the period had the mythical Irishman declaring: "The
right to be killed I’ll divide with the nayger, and give him the largest
half." J. Wilson, op. cit., p. 290.

“ Given before the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission in May, 1864.
Quoted in full in Woodward, p. 2548.

“This has already been noticed for Milliken's Bend. It is true, also, of such
engagements as that at Paducah, Ky., Mar. 1864; Simmsport, La., May,
1864; Saltville, Va., October, 1864 (where about 600 men of the 5 th
U. S. Colored Cavalry, as yet “unassigned and unorganized recruits,"
fought, and suffered over 100 casualties) ; Nashville, Tenn., December,
1864— Woodward, pp. 3062-65, 3129, 3366, 3484-85.

“See the very long letter from Gov. Andrew to Col. R. G. Shaw, July 11,
1863, in Woodward, pp. 1384-1406; and letter from Stanton to Brig. Gen.
R. Saxton, Aug. 25, 1863 ( after the Congressional act allowing enlistment
of Negroes) , where this occurs: "The [Negro] persons so received into
the service and their officers, to be entitled to and receive the same pay
and rations as are allowed, by law, to volunteers in the service . . . .”
Ibid., pp. 958-60.

“ This subject requires, and merits, a paper of its own.

“Woodward, pp. 2480, 2484-85; G. Williams, op. cit., p. 157. Another item
of importance in terms of morale, though not to be compared with that

REFERENCE NOTES

Sl6

of pay, was the extreme difficulty Negroes faced in their efforts to obtain
commissions. This whole subject of Negro commissioned officers in the
Civil War needs extended treatment.

• B. Dyer, “The treatment of colored Union troops by the Confederates,”
Journal of Negro History (1935) , XX, pp. 273-86.

" Letter dated Richmond, Aug. 12, 1863, in Woodward, p. 4573.

n The wounded officer was Lt. G. W. Fitch of the 12th U. S. Colored
Infantry. The two murdered men were Lt. D. C. Cooke of the 17th USCI
and Capt. C. G. Penfield, 44th USCI. See, statement of Lt. Fitch dated
Nashville, Jan. 3, 1865, in Woodward, p. 4381. The service records of
Cooke and Penfield, read, respectively, as follows: “Captured & Shot by
De Forest’s [sic] men”; “Murdered by . . . Forest’s Cavalry near Columbia,
Tenn., Dec. 22/64.” Service records may be found in the Old Records
Section, A. G. O. division. National Archives. Compare this with B.
Dyer, op. cit., p. 282.

"One such “indignity” was the burial, in a common grave, of Negro
soldiers and their white officers, as in the well-known case of Col. R. G.
Shaw and his men of the 54th Mass. Another episode of more serious
consequences is described by one F. J. D’Avignon, Surgeon of the 96th
New York Volunteers, in a letter to Gen. B. F. Butler, dated Oct. 13,
1864 (in Woodward, p. 4371) . Dr. D’Avignon was a prisoner at Peters-
burg, Virginia, and was placed in charge of many of the wounded
Federal soldiers captured at the Battle of the Mine, a large proportion
of whom were Negroes. In August, 1864 “. . . about one hundred and
thirty wounded of our soldiers were brought to me for treatment. This
lot of wounded were looked upon by the Rebels with a great deal of
hatred and with an earnest desire to degrade them. For this object
General Henry A. Wise, commanding the first military district, issued
an order to mix the negroes with the white soldiers. A non-commissioned
officer read to me the order, to place one white man, especially an
officer, between two negroes. The order was strictly followed and the
wounded were crowded. I objected to this crowding and also to place
the men promiscuously against the good judgment of physicians and
surgeons to separate those affected with Erysipelas from the others; but
to no effect. And I can safely say that this arrangement was a cause of
destroying the life of our soldiers.” Thomas S. Gholson, Virginia member
of the Confederate House stated there on Feb. 1, 1865, that, “White and
black prisoners, captured by us at the ‘explosion’ at Petersburg, were
placed in the same hospital, and occupied cots adjoining each other.” —
Woodward, p. 3859.

"ORA, Ser. II, vol. V, pp. 455, 469, 484, and vol. VIII, pp. 640, 703. Also,
B. Dyer, op. cit., p. 283.

"Sec. of War Seddon, CSA, to Gov. Bonham of S. C., Aug. 31, 1864, in ORA
Ser. II, vol. VI, p. 703.

"The Woodward collection is particularly rich in material concerning
Negro prisoners. See, as examples, pp. 4298-99, 4604, 4609, 4614, 4647,
4653a. Negroes, both slave and free, were, in many cases, confined in
ordinary prison camps. See Ibid, p. 4653.

"In addition to the material mentioned by B. Dyer (op. cit., pp. 283*84),

REFERENCE NOTES

217

establishing this point by citing relevant statements from Lt. Gen. E.
Kirby Smith, Col. Shingler, and the Confederate Sec of War, note these
facts: Maj. Gen. R. Taylor, reporting from Richmond, Louisiana, June
8, 1863, said of a recent battle that “unfortunately” some Negroes were
captured (ORA, Ser. I, vol. XXIV, pt. 2, p. 459) ; while Maj. Gen J. G.
Walker reporting July 10, 1863, from Delhi, Louisiana, referred to the
taking of a few Negro prisoners, apd added: “I consider it an unfortunate

circumstance that any armed negroes were captured . . . Woodward

p. 2175.

77 Woodward, p. 4606. Gen. Buford was with Gen. Forrest at Fort Pillow.

"Woodward, p. 4367.

"That mass slaughter of helpless and even wounded Negro and Southern
white Federal troops occurred at Fort Pillow is clear from an investigation
of the available evidence. See Senate Reports No. 63, pt. 1, 38th Cong.,
1st Sess., and Woodward, pp. 3069-89. This is the conclusion of a
recent writer not at all friendly to the radicals responsible for the
Congressional investigation — See Harry Williams, “Benjamin F. Wade
and the atrocity propaganda of the Civil War,” in Ohio State Archaelogi -
cal and Hist. Quarterly (1939) , XLVIII, p. 40n. Williams misses the fact
that one of the features of the defense of Fort Pillow that particularly
infuriated Forrest was that the Negroes were fighting alongside Tennessee
white men.

80 F. Dyer, op. cit., p. 18.

81 Ned Warren to Col. Griffith, dated near Crystal Springs, Mississippi,
Sept. 2, 1863, Woodward, p. 4579.

“ Woodward, pp. 4580-82; ORA, Ser. II, vol. VI, pp. 258, 924. B. Dyer (op.
cit., p. 284) , barely mentions this incident, but does not present these
facts. There was a Federal investigation of these murders by Brig. Gen.
G. L. Andrews, who reported to Maj. Gen. Hitchcock from Port Hudson,
La., Feb. 7, 1864, that he had made a careful survey and w T as convinced
several Negro prisoners of war had been killed by the Confederates.
Woodward, p. 4301.

83 Woodward, pp. 3018, 3067.

84 Major R. G. Shaw to Major C. T. Christenson, Plaquemine, La., Aug. 9,
1864, in Woodward, p. 4337. The three men were Anthony King, Samuel
Mason, and Samuel O. Jefferson. Their service records bear the notation:
“Captured while on Picket Plaquemine La & shot by the Rebels in
cold blood Aug. 6, ’64.” Old Records Section, A. G. O., National Archives.

“Report of Capt. E. A. Barker, dated Fort Gibson, C[herokee] Nfation],
Sept. 20, 1864. The attack occurred fifteen miles west of Fort Gibson. —
Woodward, p. 3306.

“ Report dated Chattanooga, Oct. 17, 1864. — Woodward, pp. 3383-90; see
letter from Col. Johnson to Brig. Gen. W. Whipple, same date, giving
additional circumstantial evidence, and accounts of other mistreatment.
Ibid., pp. 4373-75.

87 See Col. Williams to Major Livingston, CSA, dated May 26, 1863, and the
reply of May 27, 1863, in Woodward, pp. 4181-82; and service record of
Pvt. Samuel Jordan, Co. D, 5th USCI, together with letters from

2 1 8 REFERENCE NOTES

General* Wild and Butler, and Col. Spear filed therein.— Old Record*,
A. G. O., Nat'l. Arch.

“Letter to Sec. Stanton, New Orleans, June 6, 1863. Woodward, p. 1298.
It is the factors named here, plus considerable familiarity with terrain,
that enabled the Negro soldier to overcome the difficulties placed before
him and to emerge as an efficient and courageous fighter during the
Civil War.

“Report dated March 5, 1864 — Woodward, pp. 3042-43. The Negro regiment

involved was the 7th USCI, and its losses in this engagement were severe

eighty-six officers and men killed and wounded. See extract from its
muster-out roll in Woodward, p. 3040.

“Figures from F. Dyer, op. cit., pp. 1016, 1240, 1266, 1267. The statement
in ORA, Ser. Ill, vol. V, p. 661 (apparently by the editor) that, “With
the exception of the two Massachusetts regiments mentioned above [54th
and 55th), the military organization composed of colored men were
mustered directly into the service of the United States, and were
organized and officered by officers acting under the authority of the US
and not of any particular State” is false insofar as it omits the other
two regiments. W. Fox in printing the official report of total deaths
among colored troops states (op. cit., p. 527n.) that this docs not include
“loss in the three Massachusetts colored regiments ♦ . . their enrollment
and loss is included with that of the white troops from Massachusetts,”
but he omits the Connecticut regiment. In a letter from Maj. C. W.
Foster, in charge of the Bureau of Colored Troops, to Brig. Gen. T. M.
Vincent, dated Aug. 17, 1866, there is a table which clearly distinguishes
these four regiments from the U. S. Colored Troops — Woodward, p. 3791.

n Woodward, p. 2776. The Negro people of Philadelphia, at a mass meeting,
pledged the Governor their support, denounced discrimination, demanded
more Negro officers and urged wide attendance at a forthcoming Negro
National Convention in New York — The Liberator, Aug. 5, 1864, p. 123.

“Woodward, p. 2801.

“The Negro officers were neither commissioned nor mustered by the War
Department. For the original General Order No. 154, see Woodward,
p. 2810. In Special Order 48, Feb. 20, 1865, Gen. Hurlbut announced
revocation of that General Order, and transferred those enlisted under
it to other Negro units. — Ibid., p. 3575.

“The officers were, Capt. H. Ford Douglass, 1st Lt. Wm. Mathews, and
2nd Lt. Patrick H. Minor. — see Woodward, pp. 3569, 3687, and G.
Williams, op. cit., p. 141. There were, also, two Negro army bands not
included in the totals of U. S. Colored Troops. — F. Dyer, op cit., p. 18;
and see Woodward, p. 3791, Maj. Foster to Gen. Vincent, Aug. 17, 1866.

“Gov. Andrew to Col. R. G. Shaw, July 11, 1863, Woodward, p. 1394.

“Woodward, p. 2564. In May, 1864 one John E. Revels of Des Moines,
attempted to enlist in the 44th Iowa Infantry but, in this case, the effort
failed for he was rejected as of “African descent .” — Report of the
Adjutant General .. .State of Iowa, 1864-65 (Des Moines, 1865), p. 84.

“J. T. Wilson, op cit., pp. 94n., 179.

“Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in

REFERENCE NOTES

219

America (3 vols., Boston, 1877) . Ill, pp. 287-88. This is referred to, not
quite correctly, by Wiley, op. cit., p. 311.

•» G. Williams, op. cit., pp. 76-77. Williams says (p. 141) that Lt. Col. W. N.
Reed of the 1st North Carolina Infantry “was supposed by the officers
of his regiment and other persons” to be Negro. He was monally wounded
at Olustee, Florida.

“°We do not refer to the hire of Negroes as laborers attached to quarter-
master, commissary, engineer, and medical departments, nor to those
hired in a similar manner by individual units. The non-enlisted Negroes
will be considered separately. This distinction, important for a discussion
of casualties, is missed in the very rare cases where the subject has been
even broached. See, for example, Wiley, op. cit., p. 341.

101 General Order No. 67 issued at Memphis, in ORA, Ser. I, vol. XVII,
pt. 2, pp. 158-60.

loa General Order No. 6, MurfreesboTOugh, Tenn., Jan. 27, 1863, in ORA,
Ser. I, vol. XXXIII, pt. 2, pp. 17-18.

in public Act No. 57, section 10, approved Mar. 3, 1863 in ORA, Ser. Ill,
voi. m, p. 94.

104 General Order No. 172, Winchester, Tenn., July 23, 1863, in Woodward,
p. 1940.

i» General Order No. 53, dated Vicksburg, Miss., Aug. 23, 1863, Ibid., p. 1950.

In this case it is not dear that the Negroes were to be enlisted.

106 ORA, Ser. Ill, vol. 3, p. 843, italics in original.

™ Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, 1861-65, 1
(Topeka, 1896) , pp. 25, 27, 32, 36, 45, 48, 53, 57 . 60, 62. In this total
duplications, resulting from transfers of individuals, are eliminated.
'“Ms in Old Records Office, A. G. O., Natl. Arch. Nevertheless, in the
Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio m the War of the
Rebellion, V (Akron, 1887), p. 695, James Woods is listed as having
entered the service on Aug. 11, 1863.

Whether or not their pay was equalized in 1864 with that of other
Neero soldiers is a moot point, though presumably it was In Jan. 1863,
the Dept, of the Cumberland ordered that Negro cooks be paid by the
Quartermaster. But in October that service pointed out that die cooks
were regularly enlisted soldiers, and so on Oct. 10, 1863 Gen. Rosecrans
ordered them to be paid in the same manner as other enlisted men.
See Woodward, p. 1664.

““This may help dear up occasional contemporary references to Negro
soldiers' serving** in "white” regiments. See the story about W.lham Sawyer
and his five sons in the service, induding one m the 5th I “ dl ^ a ^ a ^
in The Liberator, Aug. 12. 1864, p. 181: and diary entry dated June -3,
1863, of Isaac L. Taylor, of the First Minnesota Infantry: In the 18th
I observed several colored troopers fully armed and equippe ,
c. Wolf. "Campaigning with the First Minnesota. Minnesota History

(1944) , XXV. p. 357. Italics in original.

•“These remarks are based on a small sampling of service records-totaltng
some thirty individuals of various regiments— and condusions b
are to be considered, therefore, as tentative.

220

REFERENCE NOTES

** Th ? . fmal statcment of Pvt - Charles Danna shows that he had been kiimt
dothtng to the value of $29.27. but that he had never been 1 nw
Rec’ds Sect., AGO. Nat’l Arch. Danna will be found listed in the Official
Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion

g!ve^ mCinnat1 ’ 1886) P ' 5i6 ’ WhCre h " datC ° f cnrollment >* inaccurately

“There were 2 teamsters. 4 wagoners (a position ranking above that of
private) and 600 under-cooks. These figures were compiled on the basis
only of those dearly listed as Negro in the Report of the Adjutant General
of the State of Illinois (vols. IV-VIII, Springfield. 1867) . Some may have
been missed, so the above figures represent a minimum. Spot-checkine
avadable records shows that the other states had similar conditions. Not?
of the condition in one Kansas regiment has already been taken and the
data or one Ohio regiment will be presented subsequently

0f the Ad 1 uta nt General of State of Iowa , 1864-65 (Des Moines

™> y pp r m m »t. m, m. «o. m. m. ,, JSUgZ

VUI "»>• pp %

m *°“ rCe n °‘ e 1 , I . 3 ‘ The mortalit y rate al °ne would be a little over 6 per
ant. The mortality rate for Illinois troops as a whole, from all causes was
16.5 per cent_W. Fox, op. cit., p. 526. '

“Ms in Old Records Section, A. G. O., Natl Arch. Official Roster of the
Soldiers of the State of Ohio. . . V, p. 695. Normally this work cartes a
notation of wounds received in action. 3

'lor. lITxIu, p U t Se 2,°p N 3 e 6 r WOmen 3S W ° rke ” SeC ’ f ° r eXam P ,e ' ORA -

T t , he figUrCS genera “y dted -- s «. for example, Wiley, op cit
p. 341. Until a serious study is undertaken of the subject. howLer these'
remain little more than educated guesses.

“JSj" faring. Jr., « a letter to Gen. Asboth, dated Rolla, Mo., Dec 19
1861. mentions this use, as well as that of hired teamsters and hosoital

the ^ nts ‘- Woodward . P- «4. The Provost Marshal of St. Louis informed
the police that they would, hereafter, arrest fugitive slaves only if claimed

on .rihf manner by [their] owner ’” for the practice of arresting Negroes
n slight pretext was most annoying to army officers whose orderlies fre
quently were among those jai.ed._ORA, Ser. I. vol. VIIIp 584 Genert

>t CJan. 27, 1863, in ORA, Ser. I. vol. XXXIII, pt. 2, pp. 17-18) and Gen
Sherman forbidding it (Aug. 8, 1862, ORA. Ser. I, vol. XVII. pt 2, pp ^8-'

“rvant “ce"4rJ , T ° n - WaS , ba ? ed UP ° n the faCt that °® cers a t^horized
S nl t* 3 CrS Salanes ( ec l u ‘ va lent to that of a private) in

ZZntZindTJ l T gC ’ r; hiI , e / uch a sum was not generally paid Negro
!?° uld " ot have b ^n paid them. See also Report
p. 29 & y ° f War ’ House Exec - D °c- 83, 38th Cong., 2 Sess. (1865) ,

''mad? v° St dCa I ly ° n the <l uestion of what payment was to be

the Cumberfand hKrde^rt ^ ° l

REFERENCE NOTES 22 ,

Quartermaster General of the Army, asked J. M. Brodhead, 2nd Comp-
troller, U. S. Treasury, whether that was legal. The latter, on Aug. 15
said it was not legal, that they were to be paid as regular soldiers (just
as whites acting as officers’ servants were) ; that is, they were to be paid
from money appropriated to the officers for their servants' pay. The Secre-
tary of War directed Gen. Rosecrans, on Aug. 27. 1863, to so modify his
order. Ms in box marked "Negroes, ’’ among Quartermaster Records, War
Records Office, Natl. Arch.

“° Woodward, p. 4148; ORA, Ser. II, vol. Ill, p. 804.

141 Woodward, p. 4149; Letters Sent, (MS.) Department of Virginia, vol. Ill,
p. 134, War Records Office. Entry dated Feb. 23, 1862. Note that these
Negroes were exchanged as prisoners of war, i. e., since they were used
as servants the Confederacy apparently did not object. Servants of Con-
federate officers were also returned, but the Confederate Commissioner
for Exchange of Prisoners, Robert Ould, denied, in a letter to Sec. of
War Seddon, June 24, 1863, that they were accepted “as prisoners of war.
They were not,” he wrote, “counted in exchange.”— Woodward, p. 4549.

m Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the
Rebellion (30 vols., Washington, 1894-1922) , Ser. I, vol. XIX, p. 462. (It
was these two free Negroes of Massachusetts who were sold into slavery, as
noted before.) Hereafter to be cited as ORN.

138 The Liberator , Dec. 16, 1864, p. 203 (where Small’s 6rst name is given as
Thomas) ; ibid., Dec. 30, 1864, p. 210.

124 Earl Conrad, Harriet Tubman (Washington, 1943). pp. 149-89.

135 Col. Charles P. Stone in report dated Camp near Pooleville [Md.], June
28, 1861, in ORA, Ser. I, vol. II, p. 118.

138 Gen. Hamilton to Gen. Halleck, near Madrid, Mo., Mar. 20, 1862, in Wood-
ward, pp. 484-85.

m Woodward, pp. 491-92.

138 The Secretary of War ordered Heath “detained in custody and placed
at hard labor in a secure place and for other attention.” The meaning of
the last three words is obscure. — ORA, ser. II, vol. VI, p. 1053. See also,
ORA, ser. IV, vol. II, pp. 36-38; and Herbert Aptheker, Essays in the
History of the American Negro (N. Y., 1945) , pp. 193-94.

139 Vincent Colyer, Report of the Services rendered by the Freed People to
the United States Army in North Carolina (N. Y., 1864) pp. 9-10. Colyer
was Superintendent of the Poor under Gen. Burnside from March through
June, 1862. He makes clear that these Negroes were armed. Two in par-
ticular, William Kinnegy and Samuel Williams, are praised by him. In
May, 1862, Williams acted as a guide in an expedition composed of three
regiments. Ibid., pp. 16-25.

180 Gen. T. Williams to Capt. R. Davis, July 4, 1863. — Woodward, p. 554.

131 Maj. Gen. W. S. Rosecrans, “The Battle of Corinth,” in Robert U. Johnson
and C. Buel, eds.. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols.. N. Y.,
1887) , II, p. 741.

138 Capts. F. E. Prime and C. B. Comstock, Nov. 29, 1863, in ORA, ser. I.
vol. 24, pt. 2, p, 177; see also, p. 203. Capt. Prime had reported on Feb. 9,

222

REFERENCE NOTES

1863, that 550 contrabands were laboring for the engineer department before
Vicksburg. — ibid., pt. 1, p. 119.

“•Report of Col. F. M. Cockrell, dated Demopolis, Ala., Aug. 1, 1863, in
ORA, ser. I, vol. XXIV, pt. 2, p. 416.

m Telegram, Gen Sherman to Gen Thomas, June 26, 1864, in Woodward,
p. 2819a.

“® Dated Kingston, Ga., Nov. 9, 1864, in Woodward, p. 2821. Note this passage
from the 1865 report of Major General M. C. Meigs, the Quartermaster
General of the Army to the Sec. of War: "Colored men continued to the
close of the war to be employed in connexion with the trains of the
Quartermaster’s department as laborers at depots, as pioneer with the
marching columns. In all these positions they have done good service and
materially contributed to that final victory which confirmed their freedom
and saved our place among nations.” — Exec. Doc. No. 1, vol. 3, 39th Cong.,
1 Sess. (ser. no. 1249), p. 117.

"ORA, ser. Ill, vol. Ill, pp. 1077, 1085, 1104-05.

m Woodward, pp. 1906, 1930, 1950. See petition of Simon Douglas and seven
other Negroes requesting payment for work as teamsters from June through
August, 1863, in Virginia with a Pennsylvania artillery unit, in box marked
"Negroes,” Quartermaster records. War Records Office, Nat’l. Arch., and
many other manuscripts of similar content in the same collection, and
in an envelope marked "Contrabands.” Pay of $25 and even $30 a month,
plus rations (high wages indeed for the period) was not unusual for these
Negroes. This was true particularly in 1864 when, because of the draft,
states were forbidding whites to accept jobs as teamsters or in other public
service.

“•Letter from Brig. Gen. R. Ingalls to Gen. Meigs, Aug. 15, 1863. This and
subsequent letters to Meigs are from Ms. in Quartermaster records file
on "Negroes,” Natl. Arch. In a telegram of Aug. 4, Gen. Ingalls had
estimated 11,000 Negroes as attached to his Army.

“•Lt. Col. J. W. Taylor to Meigs, Aug. 6, 1863. Capt. F. Winslow thought
11,000 was a correct figure for the Department of the Cumberland — telegram
to Meigs, Aug. 5, 1863.

140 Capt. A. R. Eddy to Gen. Meigs, Aug. 8, 1863. Capt. W. Dickerson (to
Meigs, Aug. 5, 1863) , estimated there were 250 Negroes employed by the
quartermaster alone in the Department of the Ohio.

141 Brig. Gen. D. Rucker to Meigs, Aug. 5, 1863.

“•Letters of Jan. and March 1865, in New Orleans Daily True Delta, Jan. 30
and Mar. 19, 1865, quoted by Wiley, op. cit., p. 211.

“•Report of Maj. Gen. Meigs to Secretary Stanton, Nov. 8, 1865, in Exec.
Doc. No. 1, vol. 3, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (ser. no. 1249) p. 110.

lu Ibid., p. 257. How incomplete even these figures are may be seen from
the fact that the total burials of contrabands in Virginia are given as 591

“•Woodward, p. 825. A Negro physician, G. P. Miller, of Battle Creek,
Michigan, wrote to Secretary Cameron on October 30, 1861 that he had
learned Gen. Sherman was authorized to enroll Negroes. He, therefore,
wished "to solicit the privilege of raising from five to ten thousand free
men to report in sixty days to take any position that may be assigned us

REFERENCE NOTES

223

(sharpshooters preferred),” or, he went on, "If this proposition is not
accepted we will, if armed and equipped by the government, fight as guer-
rillas.” This offer was rejected by the War Department, but Mr. Scott’s
reply contained these words: ". . . you are respectfully informed that the
orders to Genl. Sherman and other officers of the United States service,
authorize the arming of colored persons only in cases of great emergency
and not under regular enrolment for military purposes.”— Woodward
pp. 827, 828.

“* Saxton to Stanton, in ORA, Ser. I, vol. XIV, p. 375. See also the report
of Major R. Jeffords, C. S. A., dated June 14, 1862, telling of his leading
105 men in a reconnaissance of Hutchinson Island, S. C., during which
"Some 10 [Negroes] were killed and 10 or 15 wounded.”— ibid., p. 38.
Ibid., p. 189.

“•Col. Clayton, in his report of this battle, declared: "The negroes also
did me excellent service, (see Captain Talbot’s report, which I fully
endorse) , and deserve much therefor.” — Woodward, pp. 2245-47.

“•Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, Autobiography (2 vols., N. Y., 1907), II, p. 163.
Casualties suffered are not stated.

“° Col. R. D. Mussey to Major Foster, Louisville, June 12, 1864.— Woodward,
p. 3160. Many employees of the Quartermaster department took part in
the defense of Nashville, but how many were Negroes is not known.

151 On this see the following by the present writer: The Negro in the Civil
War (N. Y., 1938) , pp. 18-25; American Negro Slave Revolts (N. Y„ 1943) ,
pp. 359-67; "Notes on slave conspiracies in Confederate Mississippi,” in
The Journal of Negro History (1944) , XXIX, pp. 75-79. In addition,
see ORA, ser. I, vol. XXVI, pt. 2, pp. 187-88, letter from Lt. Col. S. A.
Roberts, C. S. A., to Capt. E. P. Turner, dated Bonham, Texas, Aug. 29,
1863, telling of the discovery of a plot to rebel among Negroes and whites
in Dallas, Cooke, Grayson and Denton counties, “and perhaps others.”
In Denton, eighteen Negroes and six whites were arrested. Other details
are lacking, but the Colonel said it was "certain that a deplorable condition
of affairs exists in the counties named and probably in some adjoining
ones.”

“•For Tennessee, see ORA, ser. IV, vol. I, p. 409; Alabama— Woodward, p.
1044. The Louisiana Native Guard Regiment of the Confederacy had but
120 muskets for 906 men and officers, was in no engagement, and did
not leave New Orleans as did the other Confederate units when Union
forces entered. See, Woodward, p. 1027, and Charles Wesley, “The
employment of Negroes as soldiers in the Confederate Army,” in The
Journal of Negro History (1919), IV, pp. 239-53. Professor Wesley writes
that “there is no evidence that” Negro troops participated "in any
important battles.” He presents no evidence, however, that they partici-
pated in any battles, and the present writer has seen no such evidence.

“•Woodward, pp. 1037, 1038.

184 This is said notwithstanding the following: N. W. Stephenson, “The
question of arming the slaves,” in American Historical Review (1913) ,
XVIII, pp. 295-308; T. R. Hay, "The South and the arming of the
slaves,” Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev (1919), VI, pp. 34-73; and J. B.
Ranck, Albert Gallatin Brown (N. Y., 1937), pp. 242-51. There is much

REFERENCE NOTES

224

material on this scattered throughout the Woodward Ms. The whole
subject of the Negro in the Confederate service needs thorough study.

im Moses Dallas, a Negro pilot in the Confederate Navy, was killed when,
with a party of rebels, he stormed the U. S. S. Water Witch, in June,

1864. ORN, ser. I, vol. XV, p. 495. Nineteen Negroes, serving as

teamsters for the Confederacy, and taken in batde, insisted, successfully,
upon being returned when prisoners of war were exchanged. — Report of
Lt. Col. W. H. Ludlow to Gen. L. Thomas, Fort Monroe, Va„ Oct. 8.
1862— Woodward, p. 4151. The Secretary of War directed that Negroes
who served as servants of Confederate officers and were captured, were
in no case to be returned, even if they desired this. See letter from
Brig. Gen. E. R. S. Canby to Brig. Gen. W. W. Morris, Washington,
Dec. 18, 1863, Ibid., p. 4263.

THE NEGRO IN THE UNION NAVY

1 Thus Richard S. West, Jr., mentions that many fugitive slaves flocked to
Federal vessels, and adds: “A number of able blacks were enlisted on
the ships as powder monkeys and coal passers." — Gideon Welles Lincoln's
Navy Department (Indianapolis, 1943) , p. 184. — In the three volume
The Navy in the Civil War, issued by Scribners in 1883, volume one
( The Blockade and the Cruisers by J. R. Soley) , and volume three
(The Gulf and Inland Waters by A. T. Mahan) , do not mention the
Negro, while the second volume (The Atlantic Coast by D. Ammen),
notes (p. 34) the slaves' joy at the approach of Federal forces, and the
exploit of Robert Smalls in delivering a Confederate vessel to the Union
blockading fleet (p. 65) . John W. Cromwell mentions Negro sailors who
won Medals of Honor in the Civil War, though his account is marred
by several errors (The Negro in American History, Washington, 1914,
pp. 252-53) . The subject is not discussed in C. G. Woodson’s various
editions of The Negro in Our History, while my own The Negro in the
Civil War (N. Y., 1938) , did little more than Daniel Ammen, as cited
above.

* Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the

Rebellion (30 vols., Washington, 1894-1922) . Hereafter cited as ORN,
with volume references for series I, unless otherwise indicated.

* Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War (8 vols.,

Norwood, 1931-35) . See vols. VII, VIII.

4 See endorsement, dated May 25, 1903, to request for information from
the Adjutant General of Ohio, dated May 13, 1903, in Navy Department
Records, National Archives, Washington. — hereafter cited as NDR.

“See E. R. Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania (Washington, 1911), p. 41;
L. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England (N. Y., 1942), pp. 114-16.

•Among others may be mentioned Crispus Attucks, Paul Cuffee, Prince
Hall, Denmark Vesey, James Forten, and Henry Highland Garnet.

7 Herbert Aptheker, Essays in the History of the American Negro (N. Y.,
1945) , pp. 95-96; L. P. Jackson, Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in
the Revolutionary War (Norfolk, 1944) . Professor Jackson has been able
to establish the names of 179 Negroes who served revolutionary Virginia
as regular soldiers and sailors, the total for the latter equaling 75.

REFERENCE NOTES

• See A. S. Mackenzie, The Life of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (2 vols
N. Y., 1840), I, pp. 165-66, 186-87; Niles' Weekly Register (B^t 11101 ^
Feb. 26, 1814, V, pp. 429-30. 6 v '*

•Usher Parsons to George Livermore, letter dated Providence, Oct 18
1862, in G. Livermore, An Historical Research respecting the Opinions
of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as
Soldiers (3rd. edit., Boston, 1863) pp. 159-60. Parsons, one of the most
noteworthy of American physicians, served as a Naval Surgeon throughout
the War of 1812 and until 1821 under Perry and Macdonough. For a
sketch of his life see Dictionary of American Biography, XIV, pp. 275-76.

10 See Table 14, Negro Population 1790-1915 (Bureau of the Census, 1918)
p. 511; E. Turner, op. cit., pp. 124-25; R. A. Austin, New Haven Negroes
(New Haven, 1940) , p. 21; L. P. Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property
Holding in Virginia 1830-1860 (N. Y., 1942) pp. 77-79; J. H. Franklin
The Free Negro in North Carolina 1790-1860 (Chapel Hill, 1943) , p. 141

u Outstanding examples are the 1822 act of South Carolina and its national
and international repercussions, and a similar law passed by North
Carolina in 1830 and repealed, the next year, because of the "great howl
[that] went up from employers in the seaport towns” of that state—
Franklin, op. cit., p. 141. See Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slavi
Revolts (N. Y., 1943) p. 275, and sources therein cited; protest petition
of Negro seamen presented to the House of Representatives by John Q.
Adams, Feb. 7, 1842 in Journal of the House ... 2d sess, 27th Cong . . .
Washington, 1842) , p. 325; Exec. Doc. No. 119, 27th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 2;
"Memorial of sundry masters qf American vessels lying in the port
of Charleston, S. C.,” dated Feb. 7, 1823, in Niles' Register (Baltimore) ,
Mar. 15, 1823, XXIV, pp. 31-32; and another petition from Negro seamen
presented to the House of Representatives on Feb. 27, 1843, in Journal
of the House . . . 3rd. sess., 27th. Cong , . . (Washington, 1843) , p. 475.

“Opinion dated Nov. 7, 1821, in H. D. Gilpin, ed.. Opinions of the
Attorneys General of the United States . . . (Washington, 1841), I, pp.
382-84; note that a free Negro of Petersburg, Va., John Updike, was the
owner of four commercial vessels from 1824-62. — L. Jackson, op. cit.,
p. 141.

“Opinion dated Nov. 29, 1862, in J. H. Ashton, ed.. Official Opinions of
the Attorneys General of the United States . . . (Washington, 1868), X,
pp. 382-413.

14 R. Peters, ed.. The Public Statutes at Large of the United States . . .
(Boston, 1845) , II, p. 809.

“Letter dated Navy Yard, Boston, Sept. 13, 1839, in file marked "Circulars
from Secretary Apr. 19, 1836, to Jan’y 1, 1872,” in NDR.)

“Secretary A. P. Usher to the Speaker of the House, Aug. 10, 1842, in Exec.
Doc. No. 282, 27th Cong., 2d sess. vol. V. The Senate on July 29. 1842,
on the urging of John C. Calhoun, passed an amendment to a naval
enlistment bill restricting the use of Negroes to service as cooks,
stewards, and servants, but this failed of final enactment. — Cong. Globe.,
27th Cong. 2d sess., vol. XI, pp. 805-07. Note that the Navy did not keep
separate records for white and Negro personnel.

M The Army, in 1820, had specifically forbade enlisting Negroes. This was

REFERENCE NOTES

226

done in a General Order, Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office, Feb. 18
1820: 44 No Negro or Mulatto will be received as a recruit of the Army ••
— Elon A. Woodward, compiler, 44 The Negro in the Military Service of the
United States . . (MS) , p. 348, located in War Records Office, National
Archives, Washington, D. C. For comment on this Woodward collection,
see footnote 8, p. 210 ante.

“Stringham to Welles, July 18, 1861, aboard U. S. S. Minnesota, Hampton
Roads, Va., in ORN, VI, pp. 8-9. *

“ Welles to Stringham, July 22, 1861, Ibid., p. 10.

"From reports of various naval officers. Ibid., pp. 81, 85-86, 95, 107, 113-14.

“Welles to Flag Officer Goldsborough, commanding the Atlantic Blockade
Squadron, Ibid., p. 252. “Boys,” or apprentices, formed the lowest ranks
in the navy. There were 3rd, 2nd, and 1st class “boys” who received $8,
9, and 10 respectively. It is important to observe that this restriction
applied only to contrabands, and, as will be shown, was shortly modified
even as to them.

“See Special Order No. 72, Oct. 14, 1861, and General Order No. 37, Nov.
1, 1861, in Exec. Doc. No. 85, House of Rep., 37th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 2-3.
For 44 unusual amount of labor” men might be given an extra fifty cents
or one dollar. Those sick for less than ten days received half pay; over
ten days, no pay. In addition, the workers generally were underfed,
poorly clothed, and often cheated of what little pay they were supposed
to receive. — Ibid., pp. 4-13.

“Commission appointed by Maj. Gen. Wood, commanding Department of
Virginia, on Jan. 30, 1862; its report dated March 20, 1862.— Ibid., p. 9.

u Report of Secretary of the Navy, Dec. 7, 1863, serial number 1183, p. xi;
Report of the Secretary of the Navy, Dec. 5, 1864, serial number 1221, p.
xxiii; from 1861 to 1865 a total of 1059 vessels were commissioned by the
Navy. These are listed by name in ORN, ser. II, vol. I, pp. 15-23.

“These conditions are complained of by the Secretary of the Navy in his
Report of Dec. 7, 1863, op. cit., pp. xxvi-xxvii.

"Stanton to Dix, July 4, 1862, in Woodward Ms. (see note 17, ante .) , p. 889;
Welles to Stanton, Jan. 7 and Jan. 12, 1863.— Ibid., p. 1903. On April 8,
1864, Stanton ordered Maj. Gen. Lewis Wallace at Baltimore to transfer
800 Negro troops to the Navy— Ibid., p. 2476. Welles ordered Commodore
Charles Wilkes, commanding the James River Flotilla, Aug. 5, 1862 to
‘‘fill up the crews with contrabands obtained from Major-General Dix, as
there is not an available sailor North.” — ORN. VII, p. 632. For other com-
plaints as to manpower shortage see ORN, XIV, p. 401; XXIII, pp. 246, 535;
XXIV, p. 545.

“ ORN, XIII, p. 209.

“ MSS in NDR. Note that the remarks in the letter from the Superintendent
are in conflict with the 1839 circular of the Navy Department, and the
1842 report of the Secretary, as given before.

“ Muster rolls in NDR. In selecting these ships care was taken to see that
they were of different types; otherwise the selection was entirely by
chance. For a description of these vessels see ORN, ser. II, vol. I, pp. 37,
41, 159. The muster rolls, after 1862, contain columns for personal

T REFERENCE NOTES 227

description*, including hair and color, which make certain the identifi-
cation, in terms of Negro and white, of the people involved. Occasionally
under the column, “occupation" will be found the word, “slave." and
the columns for personal characteristics are then left blank. At times
muster rolls prior to 1863 contain the entry "contraband” showing, onW
in this way, the presence of Negroes. 6 7

“Specifically mention may be made of the following vessels-dates indicating
muster rolls examined: Monitor. Nov. 7, 1862; Kearsaee, Nov. 20 1864
Hartford, Sept. 30, 1864; Brooklyn, June 30, 1864; Oneida, July 1862*
New Ironsides, Mar. 28, 1863; Pensacola, Dec. 31, 1863; Stepping Stones
Apr. 1, 1863. ° '

ORN, xxn. p. 80; also VII, p. 324; XIII, p. 5. This order also
directed that a monthly return ‘‘be made of the number of this class of
persons employed on each vessel,” but none has yet been found. These
reports, when consolidated, were supposed to go to the Chief of the
Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, Rear Admiral Foote, but a search
through the MS Letter Books of that official was unsuccessful. Occasional
reports from individual ships are noted in this sourcer-as in vol. I, pp.
220, 312, NDR. On Jan. 1, 1863, Acting Rear Admiral David D. Porter
informed Gideon Welles that there was “some irregularity” with these
reports (Ibid., I, p. 149) ; and on Mar. 3, 1863, he wrote to Capt. A. H.
Pennock, Commandant of the Cairo Naval Station: “I have not received
any report from any of the upper vessels about the contrabands. Please
attend to this, as the Department seems to be very particular. Send me
a list of them; also those you have employed on the station” (ORN,
XXIV, p. 457) . That some such records were forwarded is apparent from
the following words — significant ones in terms of revealing Porter’s
thinking on the Negro— in a letter from him to Foote, Jan. 3, 1863: “Don’t
be astonished at the lists of niggers I send you. I could get no men, so I
work in the darkies. They do first-rate, and are far better behaved than
their masters” (ORN, XXIH, p. 603.)

“ORN, VII, p. 632.

" Porter to Bragg, Dec. 19, 1862, in ORN, XXIII, p. 639; for the facts on
the Glide see ORN. XXIV, p. 308.

u Dated Cairo, Illinois, Oct. 26, 1862 in ORN, XXIII, p. 449. Since contra-
bands still were to be rated no higher than boys, their top pay would
be $10 per month, while coal-heavers were supposed to receive $18, and
firemen, $25 (2nd class), and $30 (1st class) —Register of the Navy of
the United States to Jan. 1 , 1864 (Washington, 1864) , p. 6.

“ Dated July 28, 1863, in ORN, XIV, p. 401.

"Dated July 26, 1863, in ORN, XXV, p. 327.

“Circular dated Dec. 18, 1862, in ORN, XXIH, p. 639.

"Porter to Gen. Thomas, dated Cairo, Oct. 21, 1863, in Woodward MSS,
p. 1049 (see note 17) . Porter is, of course, referring only to his own
Mississippi Squadron. The reader is again asked to remember that the
total number of contrabands within a squadron was far from identical
with the total number of Negroes. That, notwithstanding the Navy
Department Circular of Dec 18, 1862, just cited, Negroes were in some
cases still under-rated is apparent from the postscript of a letter from

REFERENCE NOTES

228

Commodore H. K. Thatcher to Commodore Bell, commanding the
Western Gulf Blockade Squadron, dated Dec. 8, 186S. Thatcher, referring
to an enclosed list of the strength of his vessel, the Colorado, added: “The
coal heavers being all contrabands are rated as landsmen” — ORN, XX,
p. 712.

•The pay of white pilots — about $250 per month — exceeded that of most
commissioned officers; they were listed with officers; and were referred
to as Mister. They were, however, technicians, not officers, holding a
position analogous to the automotive experts employed by the Army
during the Second World War. A trade union of pilots was largely
responsible for their high wages and their success in maintaining these
while serving the armed forces. — See ORN, XXI, p. 762; XXII, pp. 298,
404; XXV, pp. 153, 451, 557, 640, 714; XXVI, pp. 448, 725; XXVII, pp.
31-33, 132.

"The eight ships were: New Hampshire, June 7, 1864; Argosy, Dec. 31, 1863;
Avenger, Oct. 1, 1864; Pensacola, Dec. 31, 1863; Kearsage, Nov. 20, 1864;
Brooklyn, June 30, 1864; Monitor, Nov. 7, 1862; Morning Light, Jan. 1863.
The source for the first seven is the original muster-rolls; for the Morning
Light, see Report, Sec. of War, 1863, pp. 328-30. The excessive number
of landsmen may be explained, in part, by the under-rating of Negroes,
as already shown.

41 J. P. Gill is to Du Pont, Jan. 3, 1862, in ORN, XII, p. 461. Gillis commanded
the sloop, Seminole, and the naval force in Wassaw Sound, Georgia.
There is no evidence that Du Pont objected to this act taken in plain
violation of existing regulation, and Gillis’ presuming that this would
be the case appears to be significant.

"Welles’ order of Dec. 18, 1862, had stated very clearly that contrabands
“will not be transferred from one vessel to another with a higher rating
than landsman.” — ORN, VIII, p. 309.

"Du Pont to Welles, June 10, 1863, ORN, XIV, p. 251. No reply has been
found.

44 ORN, XII, pp. 647, 651; XIII, pp. 83-84.

"ORN, VIII, p. 735.

"Acting Ensign Miller to Commander Wolsey, dated New Orleans, Oct. 10,
1863, in ORN, XX, p. 451.

n Lt. Commander Weaver, dated “Off Suwanee River, S. C.,' Mar. 25, 1864
in Report, Sec. of Navy, 1864, pp. 306-07. It is likely, though not certain,
that the pilot of the Cimarron referred to as Prince, and called a “very
reliable man” was Negro. — See Ibid., pp. 317-18.

"A Court of Inquiry found that Small was partially responsible for the
disaster because he had left his post in the course of the shelling— ORN,
XVI, pp. 192, 198.

"In addition to material given in note 31, ante, see ORN, XXIV, p. 678.
80 Acting Rear Admiral Porter to Acting Volunteer Lieutenant R. K. Riley,
Cairo, Dec. 9, 1862, in ORN, XXIII, p. 619.

“ General Order No. 26, dated Off Vicksburg. July 26, 1863, in ORN, XXV,
pp. 327-38.

REFERENCE NOTES 229

■Porter to Commander W. A. Parker, dated Hampton Roads, Nov. 24,
1864, in ORN, XI, pp. 90-91.

■The quoted words come from an order given to a Lt. Collins by Flag Officer
Du Pont, Nov. 10, 1861, in ORN, XII, p. 338.

■Commodore Hitchcock to Capt. Jenkins, dated Off Mobile, Feb. 3, 1863,
in ORN, XIX, p. 599.

■J. S. Watson, Acting Master, U.S.S. Juliet, Off Ellis Cliffs [Miss.?], Mar.
15, 1864, in ORN, XXVI, p. 177. Similar action, however, was not always
taken. In Sept., 1862, Lt. Truxton heard of an uprising of Negroes at
Cumberland Island, Georgia. He dispatched men to the scene and nine
armed Negroes were seized and brought to Truxton aboard the Alabama.

They were put in irons, but when they requested to be allowed to

serve as crewmen, and when their master released them — apparently glad
to have such slaves off his hands— the officer “placed them on the ship’s
books as a portion of her crew.” — Truxton to Du Pont, Sept. 6, 1862,
in ORN. XIII, pp. 298-300. See also ORN XII, pp. 336-39.

"This occurred in Mar., 1865— ORN, XVI, pp. 297-98.

w Du Pont to Gustavus Fox, Port Royal, S. C., Dec. 22, 1862, in ORN, XIII,
p. 486. The Vermont was an ordnance, receiving, storage and hospital
vessel. — Ibid., p. 667.

“ORN, XXVI, pp. 249, 252; the Petrel was captured Apr. 22, 1864.

■ Ante, note 48. The pilot, Stephen Small, had joined this ship two days

prior to the disaster. The general remarks of Porter that Negroes could

not be trusted as lookouts, and his rather contradictory one that his
Negro sailors were doing “first-rate” have been noticed.

"Lt. Commander A. W. Weaver, dated Off Suwanee River, S. C., Mar. 25,
1864, in Report, Sec. of Navy, 1864, p. 307.

“This occurred in Nov., 1862. — ORN, XIII, pp. 430-33.

" Report, Secretary of Navy, 1864, pp. 338-44.

•Gen. L. Thomas to Stanton, telegram, dated Memphis, Apr. 4, 1863, in
Woodward MSS, p. 1167 (see note 17).

44 Recommendation dated Mar. 31, 1865 in ORN, XI, p. 488, and Report,
Sec. of Navy, 1865 (serial number 1253) , pp. 146-47.

« Records of Medals of Honor Issued to the Officers, and Enlisted Men of
the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard 1862-1917
(Washington, 1917).

"Two men received Medals of Honor as a result of this engagement; one.
white, was named Patrick Mullen, the other was Anderson. In the report
of the fight nothing is said of Anderson’s role except that he “assisted
him [Ensign Summers] gallantly,” while of Mullen some detail is
provided. In the official Record of Medals of Honor (op. cit., pp. 7, 79) ,
however, this is reversed and that which is said of Mullen is dted for
Anderson and vice versa. The report is in ORN, V. p. 535. J. W. Cromwell,
op. cit., p. 252, repeats the error of the official Record.

■ Record of Medals of Honor Issued . . . p. 14.

• ORN, XIX, p. 437; Record of Medals of Honor, p. 68. These two sources
do not indicate that Lawson was a Negro, but checking the original

REFERENCE NOTES

230

muster roll of the Hartford, Sept. 30, 1864 (NDR) proves this to have
been the fact. This same John Lawson had been severely wounded in
Apr., 1862, while aboard the Cayuga in the attack on New Orleans
ORN, XVIII, p. 181. The muster roll show, Lawson to have beerT 9«
years old, born in Pennsylvania and a "laborer.”

• ORN, Ser. I, vol. Ill, pp. 67-68.

” Daniels to the Rev. Mr. Huddleston of Wellington, Ohio, dated lune in
1913, in file No. 11954, NDR. The precise source of Mr Dani
corrections of the official casualty figures is not indicated by him bur
this must certainly have been his Bureau Chiefs and advisors.

n Lt. Comdr. K. R. Breese informed Rear Admiral Foote that the sicklv
season was approaching, that last year half the crews were prostrated
and since the ships were already short-handed, "God help us this year ”
dated Yazoo River, Miss., May 5, 1863, in ORN. Ser. I. vol. XXIV. p. 653.

” ?5 N ’ s 7, 1 ' Vol ‘ XXVI > PP- 87 * 167 > 176; for another instance, see Ibid

IA, p. 430. *

* * ccou " ts do not name the Negro. An official report from Colonel W

S. Dilwor*, C. S. A., to Major T. A. Washington, dated Tallahassee, Fla
Apr. 4, 1862, mentions the capture of the Negro "who had piloted the

enemy into the inlet to [New] Smyrna, and who was to be haneed.” An

individual named George Huston boasted of having killed the Neero

j “- "* 2 - orn - «• ■* pp- «.

“ORN, ser. I, vol. XV. pp. 158-61. Quoted words from report of Brig-Gen.

J. H. Trapier, C. S. A., dated Georgetown, S. C., Dec. 8, 1863.

“ORN, ser. I, vol. XXVI, p. 419.

“For examples of this see: Report of Sec. of Navy, 1864, pp. 312 317-19-

ORN. XII, pp. 516-17; XV, p. 410. PP ’

"Dated Aug. 26, 1861, in ORN, VI, pp. 113-14.

" Re P° rts dat ed June 23 and June 26, 1862, in ORN, VII, pp. 498, 506-07.
"Report dated Oct. 8, 1863, in ORN, XXV, pp. 452-56.

"Report dated Jan. 15, 1865, in ORN, XXII, pp. 8-9.

“ M i “aterial on the Planter, unless otherwise indicated, is based upon
°® ci o a _ reports from Union and Confederate officers in ORN, XII, pp.
821-25. r *‘

“The names of several other participants in this remarkable adventure are
known: John Smalls, A. Gridiron, J. Chisholm, A. Alston, G. Turno, A.
Jackson, and two of the women referred to simply as Annie and Lavinia.
“Private Act No. 12, approved May 50, 1862, appraisal made July 9, money
Aug 19, 1862# With Robcrt Smalls g ettin g $1*500 of the total

On Sept. 11, 1862, it was turned over to the Army’s quartermaster depart-

™ e " tal I J? t0n Head# S * C — MS lo g of U.S.S. Planter, Sept. 8-11, 1862,

LnH N ^ R ‘i N °r “T ro11 of the vcssel a PP ears t0 have been preserved,
and the log for only the above four days is available.

“See ORN, XIII, p. 126; and Official Records of Union and Confederate
Armies in the War of the Rebellion, ser. I, vol. XIV, p. 105.

REFERENCE NOTES 23 1

“Charles Cowley, The Romance of History in the 4 Black County 4 and the
Romance of War in the Career of General Robert Smalls, (Lowell, Mass.,
1882) , pp. 9-10. Smalls was, of course, a South Carolina Congressman for
ten years after the Civil War, and a General of the State's militia.

m The Liberator , Mar. 24, 1865, p. 48; Cowley, op. cit., p. 11.

“See, as examples, ORN, XII, p. 353; XIII, pp. 257-58; XV, pp. 396-97.

“Examples of each of these items are in ORN, VII, pp. 87-89* IX pp
383, 420; XII, pp. 525, 584; XIII, pp. 199, 212; XIV, p 121. ' '

“See ORN, IX, pp. 383, 730; XII, pp. 468, 572-74.

91 See report from Acting Rear-Admiral Porter to Secretary Welles, dated
Mar. 26, 1863 and other documents and reports plus a map in ORN

XXIV, pp. 474-96.

“Report of Colonel John M. Stone, dated May 22, 1863, in ORN, VIII,
p. 763. In addition to the accounts cited above, giving some more or less
precise information as to the type of information supplied by Negroes,
there are very many reports from officers in which mention is made of
this, but in purely general terms. Almost the entire ORN is filled with
this. See, as examples: VI, p. 695; VIII, p. 829; XII, pp. 50, 406; XIII,
p. 342; XIV, pp. 190, 227; XV, p. 158; XVII, p. 818; XXIII, p. 523;

XXV, p. 662.

ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF SOUTHERN
NEGROES, 1865

l See A. A. Taylor, The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction
(Washington, 1924) ; The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia,
(Washington, 1926), The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 (Washington,
1941) ; W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (N. Y., 1935) ; James S.
Allen, Reconstruction : The Battle for Democracy (N. Y., 1937) ; M.
Gotdeib, “The Land Question in Georgia,” in Science & Society (1939) ,
HI, pp. 356-88; Horace M. Bond, Negro Education in Alabama (Washing-
ton, 1939) ; Vernon L. Wharton, “The Negro in Mississippi 1865-1890,”
unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of North Carolina, 1939; LaWanda
F. Cox, “Agricultural Labor in the United States 1865-1890 with special
reference to the South,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of California,
1941; Murray Greene, “The Negro Convention Movement in the Recon-
struction Period,” unpublished master’s thesis, Columbia, 1946; Herbert
Aptheker, “South Carolina Negro Conventions, 1865,” in The Journal of
Negro History (1946) XXXI, pp. 91-99. Note, also, F. B. Simkins, “New
Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction,” The Journal of Southern History
(1939) , V, pp. 49-61; H. K. Beale, “On Rewriting Reconstruction History,”
American Historical Remew (1940) , XLV, pp. 807-27; T. H. Williams,
“An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes,” Journal of Southern
History (1946), XII, pp. 469-86.

To this writer's knowledge there is no satisfactory narrative and
evaluation of the Southern Negro’s own activities, opinions, and desires
during this period.

1 There were meetings and the voicing of demands for full equality by
Southern Negroes earlier than 1865, where conditions made this possible,
as, for example, in New Orleans in November, 1863, and February,

REFERENCE NOTES

* 3 *

1864, and in Port Royal, S. C., in May, 1864. See Du Bow 06 rii
155, 250; The Liberator, Mar. 11, 1864. p. 44. P ' PP-

•Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War (Boston, 18661 ™ « , 0 .

J' HoUi *. The &*Tly Period of Reconstruction in South^arolina
(Baltimore, 1905) , pp. 54-37; L. A. Kibler. Benjamin F. Perry SolTh
Carolina Unionist (Durham, 1946), pp 371-94.

‘Complete text in Columbia Phoenix, Sept. 15, 1865 (in library of the
University of S. C.) . Compare with the remarks of another Johnsonian
Provisional Governor Patton of Alabama, in his inaugural address 0 f
uec 13, 1865: ... It must be understood that politically and socially

ours is a white man's government."— H. Bond, op tit., pp. 23-24 Vireinia
represents a special case for it had had a Union government in
Alexandria, from 1863 on. The pattern here too, however, is similar. In
May, 1865, this government, under Pierpont, was recognized as the
official state government. An extra session of the twelve members of the
legislature met in Richmond in June and promptly suggested the
enfranchising of the late rebels. At the conclusion of the session, the
Speaker of the House, Downey, congratulated all concerned for having
kept the state government out of Abolitionists’ hands. He concluded*
“Whatever they may do to other States, thank God, they cannot now
saddle negro suffrage upon us.”— H. J. Eckenrode, The Political History
of Virginia during the Reconstruction (Baltimore, 1904), pp. 28-30.
Governor Pierpont, in a speech at Norfolk on Feb. 16, 1865, addressing
himself to the question, “What is to be done with him [the Negro]?"
declared that most Negroes “are little better than nuisances” and hoped
the military would continue, for the time being, in “charge of Sambo.”—
Francis H. Pierpont, Reorganization of Civil Government . . . (Norfolk,
1865), p. 5.

‘To Professor D. D. Wallace, these laws “were sincere attempts of kindly
paternalism to adjust appalling difficulties.”— The History of South
Carolina (N. Y., 1934, 4 vols.) , III, p. 242. For a convenient summary
of their contents see A. A. Taylor, The Negro in South Carolina during
Reconstruction, pp. 43-49.

• Du Bois, op. tit., p. 456.

T A. A. Taylor, The Negro in Tennessee 1865-1880, pp. 2, 6-7. It may be
mentioned here that southern Negroes throughout 1865 took advantage
of all kinds of occasions to turn out en masse and to express their senti-
ments. For example: on Mar. 20, “upwards of 5,000” Negroes marched
through Nashville celebrating the ratification of the revised state consti-
tution outlawing slavery_N. Y. Tribune, Mar. 21, 1865, p. 4; Raleigh
Negroes met on Apr. 24 to express their devotion to the martyred Lincoln^-
Ibid., May 2, 1865, p. 1; New Orleans Negroes on May 10 thanked Gen.
Buder for his efforts on their behalf. — Ibid., May 31, p. 7; numerous parades
of thousands of Negroes occurred throughout the South on July 4. — Ibid.,
July 12, 1865, p. 1.

•It is altogether likely that this Hodges was related to the brothers,
Charles E., John Q., and Willis A. Willis A. Hodges represented Princess
Anne County in the Constitutional Convention, 1867-68; while the other
two were members of the House of Delegates, for Norfolk County and
Princess Anne, from 1869 to 1871. — L. P. Jackson, Negro Officeholders in

REFERENCE NOTES

233

Virginia, 1865-1895 (Norfolk, 1945) , p. 21. There is reference to Willis
A. Hodges attending a meeting of Negroes in 1879 in New York to which
city he had been driven by violence. — N. Y. Daily Tribune, Feb. 28.
1879, p. 5.

•Thomas Bayne (1824-1889), was born a slave, in North Carolina, suffered
severely, came to Norfolk in 1846 where he served as an apprentice to a
dentist, and finally worked as a regular dentist himself. He helped slaves
escape from Norfolk to the North, and, in 1855, fled himself. He then made
his home in New Bedford, Mass., where he practiced dentistry, and was
elected to the city council. Bayne returned to Norfolk early in 1865 and
“became the most spectacular, the most radical, and one of the most
hated of the Negroes in politics. In color and features he was a pure
African.” He was sent from Norfolk as a member of the 1867-68 Constitu-
tional Convention. — See L. P. Jackson, op. cit., pp. 2-3; and his testimony
before a Congressional committee given in Washington, Feb. 3, 1866, in
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction at the First Session
Thirty -Ninth Congress (Washington, 1866) pt. II, pp. 58-59. (Hereafter
cited as RepL Jt. Comm.)

10 Calvin Pepper had lived in Norfolk since 1864, and prior to that had prac-
ticed his profession for six months in Alexandria. He was a native of
Massachusetts and will appear again in the course of this narrative. See
Rept. Jt. Comm., pt. II, pp. 49-50.

u The members of the committees — every one of them, by this act, a hero —
were: 1st ward — Albert Portlock, Thomas Wisher, Junius Fraser; 2nd ward
— T. F. Paige, Jr. (probably a relative of Richard G. L. Paige, a well-
to-do Negro lawyer, who represented Norfolk County in the House of
Delegates from 1871-75 and 1879-82. — L. P. Jackson, op. cit., p. 32) , Joseph
T. Wilson (Civil War veteran, later author of the still valuable The
Black Phalanx, Hartford, 1888) , Peter Shepherd; 3rd ward— E. W. Williams,
G. W. Cook, William Southall; 4th ward — George W. Dawley, A. Wood-
house, the Rev. Mr. Lewis, A. Wilson.

“In a contest among three slates, that of Todd, De Cordy and Hall received
an average of 93 white votes, the winners receiving 135, and the tail-
enders, 60.

u The N. Y. Tribune said that this Norfolk election was dominated by seces-
sionists, and that beatings of Negroes were common (June 28, 1865, p. 7) .
In the spring of 1865 the citizens of Fernandina, Florida, elected a mayor,
and “the loyalists were very glad to be reenforced by the negroes” who,
thus, did vote. The elected mayor was sworn into office by the visiting
Chief Justice of the United States.— See Whitelaw Reid, After the War:
A Southern Tour (N. Y., 1866) , pp. 160-61.

u Negroes were urged to communicate with William Keeling in Norfolk in
order to co-ordinate the Labor Associations. A similar function for Land
Associations was to be performed by George W. Cooke, and it was urged
that a Union of Virginia Colored Land Associations be formed. For the
material on the Negroes of Norfolk see Equal Suffrage. Address from the
Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of the United States.
Also an Account of the Agitation among the Colored People of Virginia
for Equal Rights. With an Appendix concerning the Rights of Colored
Witnesses before the State Courts (New Bedford, Mass., 1865, copy in

REFERENCE NOTES

234

Lib.) ; the Address was printed in full /mm
columns) in The Liberator Sept. 8. lV> XXXV n 1 ^ n - 8 over lhtw
resulting in ,hc killing of « v £, Neg^s “ LhuS, f.Th'T?

ss -

“ The liberator, June 30, 1865, XXXV, p. 103.

“The five Negroes were: Joseph C. Jackson, Georee R Dollv n,„s •
Roberts. Peter Duncan, and Joseph S. Tison. Thcfr letter was dStne ^
1865; Sumner's reply was cordial and stated that the petition Jh h ’
forwarded as desired.— Wilmington, N. C„ Herald ll M i^f been
(m library of University of N.V). Mass meet^ ofSrS £**
1865 are mentioned but not particularized in W. Reid, op. tit, pp^uug.
1 Correspondence dated Newbern, May 10, in N. Y. Tribune, May 19 lSfiS
p. 6. Professor J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton cites correspondence' from
? l the same da y. appealing in the N. Y. Herald of May 15

t x obi ““ ve -

18 ^°“ inen ^ in , these P roceeding s were: the Rev. William E. Walker, Miles
Walker, Matthew Thomas, Thomas Scott (from 1872-74 an Overseer of
the Poor in Petersburg) , Thomas McKenzie, Sr. (there was a Lt. McKenzie
on the Petersburg police force in the 1870’s) , Richard Kcnnard (later
the citys Commissioner of Streets), John K. Shore (a barber, was a free
S ^ very da y s ' a me mber of the City Council, 1872-74), James
Ford, John Brewer, the Rev. Daniel Jackson, Thomas Games, and James
H. J° nes .--Th e Petersburg News, June 9, quoted in N. Y. Tribune, June 15,
59 86 P 5 F ° r thC bl0graphical material, see L. P. Jackson, op. tit., pp.

18 An editorial commending these resolutions appeared in the powerful N. Y.
Tribune, June 20, 1865. In a book published in 1935 one reads: “In many
cases [the Negro] had come to think of this ‘freedom* he’d heard so much
about as a material thing, an article which would be delivered to him,
handed to him. In almost all cases he believed that it meant at least freedom
from work. . . . What was the use of freedom, he said, if a nigger had
to work anyway ?” — Donald B. Chidsey, The Gentleman from New
York: A Life of Roscoe Conkling, p. 57. Unlike Howard Fast’s stirring
fictionalized account of Thomas Paine’s life, books with such obscenities
are not only not banned from our schools, but are printed by the presses
of our most distinguished universities— in this case that of Yale.

See also the N. Y. Tribune of June 15, p. 1, and the Washington corre-
spondence of that paper, dated June 16, in the issue for June 17, p. 1.
The Appeal” was signed by N. H. Anderson, Richard Carter, Madison
Carter, Spencer Smithen, Robert W. Johnson, “and many others.” Mr.
Johnson was a shoemaker, and later served on the Richmond City Council.
— L. P. Jackson, op. cit., p. 57. Negroes found without a suitable pass
were to be hired out, by the Provost Marshal, to whomsoever he wished,
and to be paid $5 per month. For instances of brutality see the papers
concerning this in the National Archives, Records of the War Department!

REFERENCE NOTES

235

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, State of Virginia,
consisting of sworn testimony from several victims, as well as an eye-
witness account by Alex. M. Davis, a N. Y. Tribune reporter, in a letter
dated June 9, 1865, to Col. Brown of the Freedmen’s Bureau. One Negro,
Ned Scott, for having resisted the maltreatment of his wife and allegedly
wounding two soldiers, was bucked, rolled on the street, beaten with a
club, paraded through the town to the tune of the Rogue's March, and
then placed, in an upright position, within a coffin, head and toes exposed,
and face covered with flour and flies. He was informed that he was soon
to be executed and was put on exhibit in a main thoroughfare. The Rich-
mond Times (June 8, 1865) said it never witnessed “a more ludicrous
and amusing scene” and that for two hours the encoffined Negro “was
surrounded by hundreds of persons, who enjoyed the spectacle hugely.
The black rascal was then, almost half dead with fright and heat, re-
leased. . . The Richmond Whig (same date) reported that during this
ordeal Ned Scott “blinked his mealy eyes and said not a word . . . [but]
some of the negroes [who passed by] seemed very indignant, and swore
that was no way to treat a free black man.” — Photostats in writer’s
possession.

n Washington correspondence, June 16, in N. Y. Tribune, June 17, 1865, p. 1.
The delegation is referred to as “a fine-looking body of men.” According
to a North Carolina paper this address was written by a Mr. Van Vleet,
a white man, and president of the Richmond Union League. The paper
was a conservative one and whether this is true or not is not known. The
assertion has not been seen elsewhere. — Washington correspondence, dated
June 16, in the Wilmington Herald, June 23, 1865.

“Wilmington, N. C. Herald, July 7, 1865, p. 1. The paper wondered, with
foreboding, whether the next step might not be conferring the suffrage upon
the Negro.

“N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 28, 1865, p. 1.

84 The names of some of the Negro leaders were: Pompey Ketto, Frank
Rowan, George W. Walton, Alfred T. Jackson and M. H. Mason. The
Memphis Bulletin, in N. Y. Tribune, July 1, p. 1; correspondence from
Vicksburg in Ibid., July 11, p. 7; J. S. McNeily, “War and Reconstruction
in Mississippi 1863-1890,” in Publications of the Mississippi Hist. Society ,
c. s., (1918) , II, p. 297.

*N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 10, p. 4; The Liberator, Oct. 27, p. 169.

* Nelson Walker was elected president. Other leaders were: M. J. Gentle of
Knoxville, T. J. Rapier of Maury, and Warner Madison of Sumner. See
correspondence from Nashville in N. Y. Tribune, Aug 9, p. 1, Aug. 19,
p. 7; and A. A. Taylor, Negro in Tenn., p. 7; Congressional Globe,
Dec. 21, 1865, 39 Cong., 1st sess., pt. 1, p. 107. The local press reported
this convention quite fully. — Nashville Daily Press and Times, Aug.
9, 10, 12, 1865. See A. A. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 7-9. The N. Y. Tribune
correspondent from Nashville thought “The next session of the Legis-
lature will be compelled to take some action in the premises.” —
Aug. 19, p. 7. But the suffrage law of May, 1866, ignored Negroes, and
mass meetings and protests followed. — Taylor, p. 20. See also James W.
Patton, Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee 1860-1869 (Chapel
Hill, 1934) , pp. 127-28.

REFERENCE NOTES

236

" N al r g f ’ x'h C ' S [ an £ ard ’ Au «' 10 ’ ,865 - P- 3 (in library of U of
5. C °- T .!* c k ed ‘ tor °[ thc Standard, J. S. Cannon, inserted hi, own

snrhTr “If he f"T S ! l T e the rc P° rted speeches of each of thc delegate,
such as: Mr. Kneeland Can't See That He Is Free Yet,” or. "Mr Smhh

of Manchester, Walks Three Hundred and Eighty Eight Miles Wi.h ’
His Wife and Children." The Liberator, Aug. V 1865 p £

,h„ -A ta , National Convention. U Jof m'S JE£

from each Congress, onal District in the country, to devise mean? S
securing the voting privilege to the colored people, is being extensively
signed and circulated m Norfolk, Portsmouth, and other part, of South
eastern Virginia This paper's report of the Virginia State Negro Conven-
non, dated Alexandria, August 4. is in the issue for Aug. 18, p. m. see
also, A. A. Taylor, Negro in Reconstruction of Va., p. 14.

29 ? h . C u WaS signed by Ne,son Hamilton and Cornelius Harris on

behalf of 'the colored citizens of Richmond,” and was turned over by thc
General, to his Provost Marshal for action_N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 8, p l
Aug 11 p. 5. The issue of Aug. 8 also reported the formation, in Rich-
mond, of a Colored Loyal League for protection, education, and the securing
of political rights. 6

*N. Y. Tribune , Aug. 25, p. 8; Sept. 16, p. 1.

“See the report, dated Raleigh, Oct. 15, 1865, of Col. E. Whittlesey, Ass’t
Commissioner, Freedmen’s Bureau, in Rept. Jt. Comm., pt. 2, pp. 189-90
Col. Whittlesey remarks on the difficulties he had had in “disabusing*’
the Negroes of the idea “that they will be given land.” See, on this subject,
M. Gottleib, in Science & Society (1939) , III, pp. 365-88.

“ Galloway, a Civil War veteran, was from Fayetteville, and radical; Randolph
vs as a carpenter and teacher from Greensboro and of more conservative
views. No information has been seen on Price. See, Sidney Andrews, The
South Since the War: As Shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel in Georgia
and the Carolinas (Boston, 1866) , pp. 120, 125; F. A. Olds, “First Con-
vention of Negroes in State,” in The Orphans ' Friend and Masonic
Journal (Oxford, N. C.) , Sept. 10, 1926, LI, no. 16, in Un. of N. C. library.
Observe that this meeting was held in Wilmington. Several contemporaries
referred to the very militant and highly organized character of the Negroes
of that city and of New Bern — See, N. Y. Tribune , Oct. 7, 1865; Rept.
Jt. Comm, pt. II, p. 183; W. Reid, op. cit., pp. 29 n., 51. Reid reported that
in the spring of 1865 the Negroes of Wilmington already had a Union
League “ihe object of which is to stimulate to industry and education,
and to secure combined effort for suffrage, without which they insist that
they will soon be practically enslaved again.”

** Raleigh Daily Standard, Sept. 7, 1865, p. 3.

“Wilmington Herald, Sept. 22, p. 1, Sept. 23, p. 1 (Un. of N. C. Lib.). This
paper was opposed to Negro suffrage. — See issue of June 9. Sampson and
a William Smith were chosen as delegates to the State Convention. The
paper remarked that Sampson's father had lived in Wilmington “and was
looked upon as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and worth.”

“Charlotte Democrat, Sept. 19, Ibid., Sept. 22, p. 1. The next day students
at the university who had been largely responsible for this assault found
their own lodgings damaged, apparently by retaliating Negroes.

REFERENCE NOTES 237

“Dated Raleigh, Sept. 29 in N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 7, 1865, p. 9. A month
before a “reign of terror” was reported from Raleigh.— See Ibid., Aug. 31,
pp. 1, 4. On the last day of the Convention a committee of three was
appointed for the purpose of seeing Gen. Ruger, the Federal commander,
and requesting protection for certain delegates returning home where
bitter feelings exist against the colored convention.”— Raleigh Journal of
Freedom, Oct. 7, 1865; see also, Reid, op. cit., p. 131.

“ The memorial was the work of a committee of five— James Henry Harris,
John Randolph, Jr., the Rev. George A. Rue, Isham Sweat, and John r!
Gore. The Official Proceedings of the Freedmen’s Convention” was printed
in the recently established Republican paper, the Raleigh Journal of
Freedom, Oct. 7, 1865, pp. 1-2. A very full account is given in the N. Y.
Tribune, Oct. 7, p. 9. Contemporary sources differ on some details, and the
Journal of Freedom is followed here. A series of resolutions was also
adopted hailing emancipation, the proposed 13th amendment, and the
radical wing of the Republican party. One resolution set up a permanent
Equal Rights League of North Carolina which affiliated with the national
organization of the same name that had been formed in Syracuse in 1864.
See Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men, Syracuse,
N. Y., October 4-7, 1864 (Boston, 1864, in Boston Pub. Lib.) .

91 The entire speech, a brief one, may be found in Andrews, op. cit., p. 122;
the press reported that it was received with prolonged applause. The press
accounts differ from that in Andrews only slightly, except that according
to it the Rev. Mr. Hood called for “the right of colored men to act as
counsel in the courts for the black man” in addition to the other demands.
— N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 7, p. 9.

38 Raleigh Journal of Freedom, Oct. 7, pp. 1-2; N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 7, p. 9.
Included in the appeal was this sweeping sentence: “We most earnestly
desire to have the disabilities under which we have formerly lived removed;
to have all the oppressive laws which make unjust discriminations on
account of race or color wiped from the statutes of the State.” Taken alone
this would indeed be radical, but it must, of course, be considered in con-
nection with the entire character of the paper.

“ Extracts from editorials are reprinted in the Raleigh Journal of Freedom,
Oct. 7, 1865, p. 3. The Raleigh Sentinel liked the petition but reported
rumors that many of the Negro delegates were, privately, radical. Edward
P. Brooks, editor of the Journal of Freedom, denied this at least so far as
“the majority of the delegates” was concerned. The correspondent of the
N. Y. Tribune reported considerable militancy among delegates from the
eastern seaboard and said that one, from Wilmington, “even proposes to
demand admittance [to the] White Convention, under instructions from
his constituents.” This, however, was felt to be “so absurd and foolish and
likely to result so badly for the colored people [that] the Convention has
already set its seal of condemnation upon the project.” In the evening of
Sept. 29, James H. Harris, of Raleigh, made the featured speech. He
insisted that the Negro’s best friends were the “intelligent white class
in the South . . . counseled moderation, kindness. . . . The speech was
in the happiest vein, and kept the house in a roar of merriment. . . —
Tribune, Oct. 7, 1865, p. 9.

40 Raleigh correspondence dated Oct. 5 in N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 10, p. 8; Journal

REFERENCE NOTES

238

of Freedom, Oct. 21, p. 1. The last paper also carries a In.,., f,„ ...

Colored Man of Raleigh" denouncing this report as accomplishing nothing
Quoted in The Liberator, Oct. 6, 1865, p. 159. ™

ttJ pp T 23^r„ brid8e ’ A ° f thC DesolatedStat “ ■ • • (Hartford, 1888),

** Trowbridge, op. cit., p. 405. The strike occurred in December. In a divisive
move the police arrested only Negro strikers. — R. W. Shugg, Orieins of
p /fl f S truee ‘ e „ Lou “ ia ' ,a ( Baton Rouge. 1939) p. 501. Compare with
f* ?: Fone r. Hwloty of the Labor Movement in the United States (N Y
1947), p. 397n. v ’

U l h ' * nti £ contemporary press and literature and such investigation, as
that by the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction (18661 are
filled with substantiation of these points. See also, M. Gottleib, op. cit . and
sources there mentioned. The traditional method of handling this' epic
resistance movement of the Negro people is to expatiate on an ‘'ignorant
race who had “utter disregard for their obligations" and whose “in-
subordination" was insufferable. Quotations from a very recent example—
Lillian A. Kibler, Benjamin F. Perry, South Carolina Unionist, Duke Un
Press, Durham, 1946, pp. 401-02. The work contains an uncritical laudatory
foreword by Professor Allan Nevins. See, on the other hand, the excellent
treatment in Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier (N Y 1945\
pp. 78-83. v • /»

45 N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 28, p. 4. What became of this movement, assuming it
was able to continue, is not known.

*U. S. Senate, Jan. 5, 1866, Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 128.

"Daily Phoenix, Sept. 23, 1865 (in library of Un. of S. C.) . The resolutions
are quoted in full in Herbert Aptheker, “South Carolina Negro Conven-
tions, 1865," in Journal of Negro History (1946), XXXI, p. 93. There
had been a meeting of 4,000 Charleston Negroes, May 12, to greet the
visiting Chief Justice of the nation, Salmon P. Chase. Speeches were made
by Gen. Rufus Saxton, who urged the Negroes to petition for the ballot,
Major Martin Delany, who decried the ill-will that he said existed between
mulatto and Negro, a Mr. Tomlinson of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who
urged unity between Negro and poor white in order to “crush out the
old oligarchy," and by Mr. Chase who urged patience upon the Negroes
though assuring them that he personally would be happy to see them
enfranchised at once. — N. Y. Tribune, May 22, 1865, p. 1. For other con-
temporary references to hostility between Charleston mulattoes and Negroes
see correspondence from South Carolina dated July 4 and July 12 in
The Nation (N. Y.) , July 27, Aug. 10, 1865, I, pp. 106, 173.

"Ms. in Slavery File No. 3, “Petitions 1865," S. C. Hist. Comm., Columbia,
S. C., quoted in full in Herbert Aptheker, op. cit., pp. 93-95. The Charleston
Courier, Sept. 26, declared in connection with this petition: “It cannot but
be the earnest desire of all members that the matter be ignored in toto
during the session."

** The four documents are given in full in the N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 29, 1865,
preceded by a remark from the paper’s correspondent in Charleston, him-
self a Negro. See issue of Nov. 30, p. 4, that “A candid world is bound
to acknowledge its proceedings as the gravest exhibition of progressive

REFERENCE NOTES

«39

ideas the State has ever known." This convention was very extensively
reported, and its proceedings, published in pamphlet form, were widely
circulated. The documents, as published in this pamphlet ( Proceedings
of the Colored People's Convention of the State of South Carolina . . .
Charleston, 1865) , differ somewhat from those given in the Tribune. The
difference represents a tightening and a certain toning down in the manner
of expression. The original manuscript “Petition to the State Legislature,"
which differs in minor details from the contemporaneously published
versions, is in the S. C. Hist. Comm., and was reprinted in Herbert Aptheker,
op. cit., pp. 96-97. According to the Tribune correspondent the Address
came from the pen of Richard H. Cain, later a member of the State Legis-
lature and of Congress, while the Memorial was written by Jonathan C.
Gibbs, later school superintendent for the State of Florida. President of
the Convention was Thomas M. Holmes; others who were prominent were
Jacob Mills, John C. Des Vemey, A. J. Ransier, Robert C. De Large (later
a Congressman) , Martin Delany, and Francis L. Cardozo. This convention
is noticed in several secondary accounts. — See A. A. Taylor, op. cit., p. 43;
F. B. Simkins and R. H. Woody, South Carolina During Reconstruction
(N. Y., 1938) , p. 173; R. S. Henry, The Story of Reconstruction (N. Y.,
1938) , p. 173.

80 In addition to material already presented, note the following: Brig. Gen.
Charles H. Howard (brother of the Major-General Howard) , an inspector
in the Freedmen’s Bureau with headquarters in Charleston, testified before
a Congressional Committee on Jan. 31, 1866, ". . . there is a strong desire,
amounting almost to a passion, on the part of a large number of the more
enterprising of the blacks, to obtain land by lease, or to own land, and
that there is a corresponding repugnance on the part of the citizens of
South Carolina to allow them either to obtain land by lease or purchase.
That is the case in Georgia also.” — ( Rept . Jt. Comm., pt. Ill, p. 36.) Dr.
George R. Weeks, an Army Surgeon who spent two and a hdf years in
Arkansas, testified before the same committee: “I was with General San-
burn recently, who has charge of the negroes in the Indian territory, at
Fort Smith. A negro walked up to him and said, 'Sir, I want you to help
me in a personal matter.’ ‘Where is your family?’ ‘On Red River.’ ‘Have you
not everything you need?’ ‘No, sir.* ‘You are free.* ‘Yes, sir, you set me
free, but you left me there.' ‘What do you want?’ ‘I want some land; I am
helpless; you do nothing for me but give me freedom.’ ‘Is not that
enough?’ ‘It is enough for the present; but I cannot help myself unless
I get some land; then I can take care of myself and family; otherwise,
I cannot do it.’ " — Ibid., p. 77, testimony dated Feb. 19, 1866. A correspond-
ent reported from Orangeburg, S. C., on Sept. 8, 1865, that “The sole
ambition of the freedman at the present time appears to be to become
the owner of a litde piece of land, there to erect an humble home, and
to dwell in peace and security at his own free will and pleasure." A
Negro asked him: “What’s the use of giving us freedom if we can’t stay
where we were raised, and own our houses where we were born, and
our little pieces of ground?" — The Nation, Sept. 28, 1865, I, p. 393.

n Mary Ames, From a New England Woman's Diary in Dixie in 1865
(Springfield, 1906 pp. 96-103. The bracketed words are mine, condensing
interpolations by the diarist; see also the testimony of Capt. A. P. Ketch um,
of Gen. Howard’s staff, who was present at this meeting, in Rept . Jt.

» 4 °

REFERENCE NOTES

Comm, pt. II p. 231. Capt. Kctchum remarked: "I have attended their
political meetings . . . they have shown that they can organize . thev
arc quite well informed . . . 6 tne y

Though Gen. Howard went ahead according to his orders and attempted
to reinstate the planters, the Negroes’ refusal to sign contracts result'd
in no change in 1865. Congress in Jan. 1866, passed a bill validating land
titles stemming from Sherman’s Sea Island order of the previous 8 year
but President Johnson vetoed this. In June, 1866. land titles at Port
Roya!, S. C.. were validated but elsewhere force was used to remove the
Negroes. That force would be needed was apparent from the greeting
planters received from Edisto Island Negroes early in 1866: ’’You had
better go back to Charleston, and go to work there the planters were
told and if you can do nothing else you can pick oysters and earn your
living as the loyal people have done— by the sweat of their brows’’—
Charleston Courier, Feb. 6, 1866, in Simkins and Woody, op. cit., p 229
These lands were not regained until Nov., 1868. 9 *

“Published in St. Louis, 1865, copy in Boston Pub. Lib. The committee
consisted of H. McGee Alexander, chairman, J. Milton Turner, Secretary
and Samuel Helms, Francis Roberson, Moses Dickson, George Wedley
G. P. Downing and Jeremiah Bowman. On Oct. 19-21, 1865, there met’
m Cleveland, the First Annual Meeting of the National Equal Eights
League (Phila., 1865, copy in N. Y. Pub. Lib.) at which 41 deletes
were present, including seven from Richmond, Raleigh, Knoxville, and
Nashville. This Convention recommended to Congress the following
constitutional amendment: “That there shall be no legislation within
the limits of the United States or Territories, against any civilized portion
of the inhabitants, native-born or naturalized, on account of race or
color, and that all such legislation now existing within said limits is
anti-republican in character and therefore void.” p. 20.

“ Rept. Jt. Comm., pt. II, p. 216.

u Saxton to Rep. G. S. Boutwell of Mass., Feb. 21, 1866, Ibid., pt. Ill, p.
102. Of this Charleston Negro Union League one observer declared: “It
was not to be supposed that they [the Negroes] initiated and prosecuted
these undertakings without assistance from their white friends. Mr.
[James] Redpath has been ever at hand with his suggestions and practical
wisdom.”— Henry L. Swint, The Northern Teacher in the South 1862 •
1870 (Nashville, 1941), p. 86, citing the National Freedman, March 1,
1865. See, also, Horace M. Bond’s remarks about the social distance
between the mass of Alabama Negroes and many of their leaders. —
Negro Education in Alabama (Washington, 1939) , p. 27.

“Testimony of Charles A. Harper, in Rept. Jt. Comm., pt. Ill, p. 74. Mr.
Harper had come to Arkansas in 1862, after a residence of twenty years in
Texas. See, also, the remarks of W. H. Gray, a Negro who had been a
delegate at this convention, made, in 1867, as a member of the Arkansas
Constitutional Convention, in J. T. Trowbridge, op. cit., pp. 661-62.

“The Institute was opened in September. See a report of the ceremonies
and the speech delivered there by Frederick Douglass in the Journal of
Freedom (Raleigh) , Oct. 14, 1865, p. 4; for reference to the convention
see the N. Y. Tribune, Jan. 3, 1866, p. 7.

“Douglass was the son of Frederick and had fought as a non-commis-

REFERENCE NOTES

241

sioned officer with the 54th Mass. Regt.; Matthews had also served in the
Union Army, rising to the rank of a 1st Lt. in an independent battery
of light artillery. For the Florida convention see Cong. Globe, Feb. 19,
1866, 39th Cong., 1st sess., pt. 1, p. 912.

“Rumors of Negro insurrection appeared everywhere in the South in
December, 1865. Undoubtedly much of this was deliberately inspired for the
reasons cited by the Norfolk Negroes, but whether or not there was any
foundation for the rumors in any case is a moot point. Reports of the
occurrence of actual violence recur, some with a highly dubious quality.
Thus, from Milledgeville, Ga., it was reported on Dec. 22, that a squad
of Negro soldiers and recent dischargees attacked the supposedly
unprotected home of a widow, near Augusta, but they “met unexpected
resistance,” three Negroes being killed and two wounded, when Federal
troops rescued the inhabitants of the house, among whom no casualties
were reported. From New Orleans it was reported that on Christmas
Day three policemen had been severely wounded by “a gang of excited
negroes. Some forty of the negroes were arrested, most of whom were
armed.”— N. Y. Tribune, Jan. 1, 1866, p. 7.

“The others were Richard Hill and Cornelius Allen of Hampton, Robert
Bailey of Old Point, Frederick Smith of Williamsburg, Dr. D. M. Norton
of Yorktown, and George Chahoon, white, of Hampton. This material on
Virginia is based on manuscripts in a box marked “Negroes” in Records
of the Quartermaster Dept., War Records Office, National Archives. In
addition the Rev. William Thornton came from Hampton, Alexander
Dunlop and Edmund Parsons from Williamsburg, and Madison Newby
from Norfolk. See their sworn testimony and that of Pepper, Norton, Hill
and Bayne in Rept. Jt. Comm, pt. II, pp. 49-60. All, except Pepper, were
natives of Virginia and had lived there most of their lives. Pepper asserted
that he was acting not only for Negroes in demanding equal suffrage, but
also two hundred and fifty white men of Norfolk and Portsmouth.

MISSISSIPPI RECONSTRUCTION

AND THE NEGRO LEADER, CHARLES CALDWELL

l C. H. Brough, “The Clinton Riot,” in Publications of the Mississippi
Historical Society (1902) , VI, p. 55 [hereafter dted as PMHS]; J. S.
McNeily, “Climax and Collapse of Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1874-
76,” Ibid., (1912) , XII, pp. 403, 428; D. Rowland, History of Mississippi
(2 vols., Chicago, 1925) , II, pp. 198-99. To the credit of J. W. Garner
it is to be noted that he referred to Caldwell as “courageous” albeit
“dangerous.” — Reconstruction in Mississippi (N. Y., 1901) , p. 384. Con-
temporaries rarely mentioned Caldwell without citing his daring. — See
The Testimony in the Impeachment of Adelbert Ames, as Governor of
Mississippi (Jackson, 1877) , pp. 90, 93, 136, 145 [hereafter dted as
Impeachment Testimony ]; Report of the Select Committee to Inquire into
the Mississippi Election of 1875, with the testimony and documentary
evidence. Senate Report No. 527 (2 vols.) , 44th Cong., 1st Sess. (serial
numbers 1669, 1670) , II, p. 1263 [hereafter dted as Boutwell Report].

■For his slave-time occupation see W. C. Wells, “Reconstruction and its
Destruction in Hinds County,” in PMHS (1906) , IX, p. 101.

REFERENCE NOTES

242

•The census of 1860 gave Mississippi 457,404 Nctrroes and k-

that of 1870 showed 445.060 and 384.549 respectively ^ith' 9 ^

- R r fiVC ° f counties - rhe “nsus of 1870 was partSw

Bureau “* lf “trmating it had failed to count about sXo

* “* v " u ’ d

4 A biography of Alcorn is urgently needed. See P. L. Rainwater "Letter.
Alcorn in The Journal of Southern History (1937) , III pp 196 o 0 q!

! To 17 8- a e n,f y b F - * ^ *? ** «/

• P X‘ 137 ' 3 , 8 \ d h,s ver y revea hng speech in the Senate, Dec 20 1871
in Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 246. *

•c. S. Sydnor on Sharkey in Diet, of Amer. Biog., XVII, pp. 21-22.

,S r a ' 0f , theSC ° ffid , alS reinstituted slave ordinances and in some counties
f S ! aVe Patr ° S returned 10 dut y- at times with the approval of
fife 31 Rem,mscences °f Ctrl Schurz (3 vols., N Y., 1908).

Ill, p. 188, and Schurz s report to the President, made in Nov. 1865 in
Senate Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess (serial number 1237)

°l ** 25 ’ 1865 aSSUfed him this would ^ done.
By May 1866 the last of the approximately 9,000 Negro troops had been

removed leaving but one battalion of (white) infantry for the entire
State. Even in 1867 when registration of voters was conducted under
Federal auspices there were but some 2,000 white troops in Mississippi-

PP - 104 ’ 171s W ‘ E ' B Du Bois - Black Reconstruction
(2nd edit., N. Y., 1938) , p. 433.

•PMHS (1918, cs.) , p. 313.

•In the words of a sympathetic chronicler: “Thus perished slavery in
Mississippi, killed in the house of its friends, and by those who loved
the institution most/’ — Garner, op. cit., p. 90.

10 Based on, Journal of the Proceedings and Debates in the Constitutional
Convention of the State of Mississippi August , 1865 (Jackson, 1865);
Ordinances, Resolutions and Constitutional Amendments, Adopted by
the Mississippi Constitutional Convention , August , A. D., 1865 (n.p., n.d.) .

“ Memphis Bulletin quoted in N. Y. Tribune , July 1, 1865, p. 1; correspond-
ence from Vicksburg, Ibid., July 11, 1865, p. 7.

u The press reprinted this widely, at times adding editorical comments—
N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 10, 1865, p. 4; The Liberator (Boston) , Oct. 27, 1865,
p. 169. We have already referred to these meetings and have seen
they were typical of the actions of Negroes throughout the South that
year — see the previous chapter.

“ Canton American Citizen, Oct. 29, 1865; Natchez Courier, Nov. 2, 1865.
u See Alcorn’s speech in the Senate, Dec. 20, 1871, Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong.,
2nd sess., p. 246. In the same election Benjamin G. Humphreys was
selected as governor. He had been a Confederate general and at the time
of the election was still an unpardoned rebel, an oversight quickly
remedied by the President who, however, continued to deal with Sharkey
as acting Governor until December, 1865— Garner, op. cit., p. 94.
u Laws of the State of Mississippi passed at a Regular Session of the . . .
Legislature . . . October . . . December, 1865 (Jackson, 1866) , pp. 254-55,
280-84.

•Ibid., pp. 82-89, 115.

REFERENCE NOTES

243

17 U.S. Senate, Jan. 5, Feb. 13, 1866, in Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess.,
pt. 1, pp. 128, 806. These petitions were referred to the Joint Committee
on Reconstruction whose papers are missing so that examination of them
in the original has not been possible— letter to writer from Mr. Thad
Page, Director of Legislative Service, National Archives, Washington,
April 17, 1947.

“ Report of the [C/.S.] Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1867
(Serial No. 1347) , (Washington, 1868) , pp. 416, 417, italics added. In
the spring and summer of 1865 the Freedmen’s Bureau in Mississippi
tried to institute a system of semi-annual wage payments. These were
miserably low — from $6-10 per month for men; $5-8 for women; $2-3
for children under 14 — but the press denounced them as exorbitant and
obnoxious and hoped that “After awhile . . . our country will right up,
and then negroes will receive such wages as their services are worth
and no more, if the whole country was flooded with military orders/’ —
Canton Tri-Weekly Citizen, June 11, 1865; R. H. Moore, “Social and
Economic Conditions in Mississippi during Reconstruction*’ (unpublished
doctorate, Duke University, 1937) , p. 45. In the winter of 1865 planters
formed organizations dedicated to employing Negroes only as sharecroppers
and pledging to rent land to and hire none. — Hinds County Gazette,
Nov. 25, 1865; Moore, op. cit., pp. 54-56; V. L. Wharton, “The Negro in
Mississippi, 1865-1890“ (unpublished doctorate. University of North Caro-
lina, 1939), p. 112. Wharton’s work is particularly valuable.

19 Moore, op. cit., p. 357, citing Jackson Daily Mississippi Clarion and
Standard, June 24, 1866.

30 G. P. Sanger, ed.. The Statutes at Large ... of the United States . . .
Dec. 1865— March, 1867 (Boston, 1868) , pp. 27-29.

n For the complete law see Sanger, op. cit., pp. 428-29. On the same day
Congress enacted a little-noted law, “to Abolish and forever Prohibit the
System of Peonage in the Territory of New Mexico and other parts of
the United States” (Ibid., p. 546) , which, had it only been enforced,
would have been quite as revolutionary as the 13th amendment.

“For the total figure see Journal of the Proceedings in the Constitutional
Convention of the State of Mississippi 1868 (Jackson, 1871), appendix
[hereafter cited as 1868 Proceedings |; Garner, op. cit., p. 181. The
estimate of the Negro-White registration is based on the fact that in
September the military announced that of about 106,000 registrants, over
46,000 were white and 60,000 Negro. This early and incomplete figure
has led to some confusion in the literature. — as Du Bois, op. cit., p. 434.

“For the boycott see especially J. R. Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction
(N. Y., 1913) , pp. ISff. There was by no means unanimity on this tactic.
In addition to such characters as Alcorn and Campbell to whom reference
has been made observe that men like former Senator Brown, ex-Govemor
McRae and Ethelbert Barksdale (before the war a rabid secessionist and
after the war editor of the rather moderate Democratic Jackson Clarion)
agreed with Campbell on the advisability of “cooperating” with the
Negroes. See Jackson Clarion, May 16, 1867; J. B. Ranck, Albert Gallatin
Brown (N. Y., 1937) , p. 255; Garner, op. cit., p. 179; Wharton, op. cit.,
pp. 257-61. The story of Bourbon efforts to win over the Negro and make
him agree to a subordinate position remains to be told.

REFERENCE NOTES

244

“J. L. Power, op. cit., p. 78; Wharton, op. cit., pp. 265-66.

M Thus, on Dec. 9, 1867. Gov. Humphreys issued a proclamation referrine
to serious apprehens.ons that combinations and conspiracies are b2
formed among the blacks to seize the lands and establish farms," and
ending, I warn you that you cannot succeed." Immediately thereafter
Gen. Gillcm notified all Negroes that they were expected to sign contracts
and go to work upon the best terms that can be procured, fven should
it furnish a support only" or they would be jailed as vagrants. A special
committee appointed by the convention to investigate this declared it
to be a hoax and a slander, while Gen. Gillem admitted he had "never
shared in belief that insurrection was meditat 1868 Proceedings
PPj 579 > 581 : American Annual Cyclopedia, 1867 (N. Y.. 1868), pp

* 1868 Proceedings, pp. 3-5.

"Caldwell was absent one day and part of two others; he was a member of
the Committee on Ordinance and Schedule— Ibid., pp. 37, 531, 7i lf 7 14

-See the testimony of J. H. Estell, a white native of Alabama,’ long-time
resident of Mississippi and a Jackson lawyer who participated in Caldwell's
defense — Boutwell Report , I, pp. 327-28. The jurors must have been
white, as Negroes were not authorized to serve in that capacity until
Gov. Ames so ordered in April, 1869 — American Ann. Cycl, 1869, p. 455.

-Only half the Negro vote was cast— Garner, op. cit., p. 217n. A Mississippi
planter declared in 1868: “That in hiring freedmen for another year we
require them to expressly stipulate, to use their time and services’ for
our own interest and advantage, and if they begin to neglect their duties
and lose time by stopping their work during the week and attending
‘club meetings,’ without our permission, such hands shall be dismissed
from our service and their wages forfeited. That when any freedman shall
be thus discharged, we pledge ourselves not to hire or give such freedman
employment under any circumstances .”— De Bow's Review (1868), V,
p. 224. See also Wharton, op. cit., pp. 276-77. The disfranchising claused
created some division of feeling amongst Republicans as to the wisdom
of supporting the constitution. — Lynch, op. cit., pp. 21/.

“Before Gillem 's departure a public meeting, presided over by a former
Confederate general, thanked him for his courtesies and good-will— See
PMHS (1918, cj.) , II, p. 356. Grant’s vigor is explicable when it is
recalled that his election over Seymour in 1868 was made possible by a
half million Negro votes; he received altogether 3,012,000 votes while
Seymour received 2,703,000. Mississippi, of course, did not vote in that
election— C. H. Coleman, The Election of 1868, (N. Y.. 1933) , pp. 369-70.

“Grant, in a letter to Dent, Aug. 1, 1869, declined to support him — on
political, not personal grounds, of course. See the exchange of letters in
Amer. Ann. Cycl., 1869, p. 457. The official election returns are in Boutwell
Report, II, Documentary Evidence, pp. 137/f. Caldwell’s county went
Republican by 3,819 to 1,415. Negroes ran on both tickets, but only some
ten per cent of the Negro vote went Democratic. About 20,000 whites
voted Republican. For a typical Democratic Negro of this period see the
description of Henry House, “the faithful servant,” as a result of whose
efforts the planters “took up a collection and bought for him an excellent
little home. — in PMHS (1912) , XII, p. 165. With the pressures and
dangers that existed and the rewanls that were offered it is a tribute to

REFERENCE NOTES

245

the Negro people that they were afflicted with so few Henry Houses.

— One month later, Feb. 17, 1870, Congress admitted Mississippi into the
Union.

-Contemporaries agreed that while Caldwell was not a dramatic orator he
was a very ludd and clear speaker — Boutwell Report, I, p. 327, II, p.
1263. The Board of Police had had five members, two of whom were
Negro. This Board not only performed the functions indicated by its
name, but also was the county tax-levying body. — PMHS (1906), IX,
p. 89. Lynch is in error when he says there were four Negro state senators
in 1870— op. cit., p. 45. He names Hiram Revels, Robert Gleed, T. W.
Stringer and Caldwell but omits William Gray. — see Wharton, op. cit.,
p. 316.

“These laws were enacted in the spring and summer of 1870. Laws of

. . . Mississippi, passed at a regular session commencing Jan. 11, 1870, and
ending July 21, 1870 (Jackson, 1870), pp. 1-18, 73, 95, 104/., 132-43.
Contemporary evidence shows that Jim-Crow habits were not, of course,
abandoned overnight but they were, in many spheres, including marriage,
dissolving. This requires and demands a study of its own, that is, a
study of the actual functioning of the institutions of Jim Crowism through-
out the South during Reconstruction. It is of interest to note that while
there were eight negative votes on ratifying the 14th amendment, there
was only one on the 15th, showing almost universal reconciliation to the
idea of Negro voting. — PMHS (1918, c.s.) , II, p. 382.

-Acts passed April, 1873, in Laws of . . . Mississippi . . . 1873, (Jackson,
1873) , pp. 78-79.

“The published volumes of session laws, 1870-74, are filled with these acts
of incorporation. The tax refund law was passed in April, 1872 . — Laws
. . . Mississippi . . . 1872 (Jackson, 1872) , pp. 65-67.

-The growth in numbers of independent Negro business men, shop-owners,
teachers, public officials (as a result of the 1873 election there were 64
Negroes in the state legislature alone out of a total membership of 152,
while the Speaker of the House, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Secretary
of State and the Superintendent of Education were Negroes, and hundreds
of local offices were filled by Negroes) , was very great and noted by
contemporaries . — Jackson Weekly Pilot, Dec. 24, 1870; Garner, op. cit.,
p. 288; Wharton, op. cit., pp. 306/f. There is record of at least one Negro
newspaper during this period — the Vicksburg Plaindealer but no copies
have been seen. — Garner, op., cit., p. 293n.

- Hinds County Gazette, Sept. 16, 1869; Jackson Weekly Pilot, Nov. 26.
1870; Wharton, op. cit., p. 111.

-G. W. Wells to Attorney-General G. H. Williams, Holly Springs, April 10,
1872, and E. P. Jacobson to same, Jackson, Feb. 17, 1872. in House Exec.
Doc. No. 268, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 30-41. In July, 1870, Mississippi
enacted an anti-KKK law which had a salutary effect for a brief time—
Laws . . . Miss. . . . 1870 . . . pp. 89-92.

“See the two volumes of documentary material on KKK violence in Mis-
sissippi in Report No. 22, House of Representatives, pts. 11, 12, 42nd
Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, 1872, ser. nos. 1539, 1540) ; also Moore,
op. cit., p. 223.

41 Another precipitant of the break was Alcorn’s policy of appointing as

REFERENCE NOTES

846

few Negroes as possible to official positions and the desire of his wina of
the Party to have few Negroes run for public office. 6

u Cong. Globe, April 11, 1871, 42nd Cong., 1st sess., p. 571.

“Figures from Boutwell Report, II, Doc. Evid., pp. 137-45. Here Alcorn
is listed as a Democrat which is proper in fact if not in form The
split cut the Republican vote, for in the 1872 Presidential election Grant
beat Greeley in Mississippi by 82,000 to 47,000 or by 35,000 votes Gram
carried Hinds County by 2,500 votes; Ames by 2,200.

44 The testimony before the Congressional committee investigating the Klan
is filled with references to the Meridian affair^See also Amer Ann
Cycl. (1871) , p. 523.

45 Amer, Ann. Cycl., 1874, p. 573; Laws . . . Mississippi . . . December
1874 (Jackson, 1875), pp. 5-7; Wharton, op. cit., p. 350.

“In addition to the violence, 1874 marked the highpoint in a taxpayers’
strike, so that the Greenville Times, Oct. 10, 1875, said: “Last fall a
majority of the taxpayers refused payment of taxes." Much of the
Boutwell Report is concerned with this violence. See also Garner, op. cit.,
pp. 357/f.; A. T. Morgan, Yazoo . . . (Washington, 1884), passim. While
in Mississippi, Morgan had served in the 1868 convention and in the
legislature as well as sheriff and tax collector of Yazoo County. He
married a Negro school-teacher.

4T The Democrat invited was W. C. Wells. See his article in PMHS (1906),
pp. 85-108. Wells admits that he himself went armed to the meeting!
while Caldwell was unarmed. Caldwell’s district — comprising Hinds and
Rankin counties — was allowed two senators. His running mate, Henry
Kemeghan of Brandon in Rankin county, had come to New Orleans as
a boy from Ireland and lived there until settling in Mississippi in 1859.
As a result of murder threats and Kemeghan’s urging, Caldwell did not
canvass in Rankin. See Kemeghan’s testimony, Boutwell Report, II, p.

“ Jackson Weekly Pilot, n.d., quoted by Wells, op. cit., p. 96. No figures
have been cited as to how many Negroes and white people were present.
Some contemporary news accounts and later commentators say fifteen
armed whites put to flight three hundred armed Negroes — who deliberately
provoked a conflict. But such assertions are manifestly absurd, and
such reporters on the activities of the Negro people are about as reliable
as Mrs. Luce’s quotations from Karl Marx. Clearly, the Clinton riot
and aftermath were parts of a deliberately calculated policy of terror
and repression. That is fundamental; the details are obscure and non-
essential. On the same day as the Clinton riot an armed body of Democrats
surrounded a group of about one thousand Negroes near Utica and
forced them to listen to speeches — Brough, op. cit., p. 55.

“The name was taken from the Modoc Indians who had recently risen against
the Federal government and been suppressed by the Army in a war
lasting several months.— J. Curtin, Myths of the Modocs (N. Y., 1912) .

“Wells, op. cit., p. 100. One of the white people killed was Wm. P. Haifa,

a Justice of the Peace, whose wife taught at a Negro school Boutwell

Report, I, 483/f.

“ Testimony of Mrs. Caldwell given in Jackson, Miss., June 20, 1876, in
Boutwell Report, I, p. 439. Of these Modocs one historian has permitted

REFERENCE NOTES 247

himself to write what they performed “valiant and vigorous work for
the protection of life and property"! — PMHS (1902) , VI, p. 61.

M PMHS (1902), VI, p. 61.

“ PMHS (1912) , XII, p. 390. James Zachariah George, Colonel in Confed-
erate Army, Brigadier-General of Mississippi State Troops, Chief Justice
of Mississippi’s highest court, 1879-81; U. S. Senator, 1881-97; drafter of
the disfranchisement clause of the 1890 constitution. — Diet. Am. Biog.
VII, pp. 216/.

54 Morgan, op. cit., p. 475/. Pierrepont as Attorney-General in a Republican
administration is indicative of the slight significance of party labels in
critical moments of American history. In the late ’fifties he was a leading
New York Democrat, and during the war was a Union Democrat. He
favored Johnsonian Reconstruction and was a regular Democrat until
1868 when he campaigned for Grant. His later elevation to the Cabinet
was one of his rewards for this. — Diet. Am. Biog. XIV, p. 587.

“PMHS (1912), XII, p. 391. Bruce, the second and, so far, the last Negro
Senator, was elected to his position by the Mississippi legislature in
1874 after Ames' victory. He was much more militant than Revels. — See
G. D. Houston, “A Negro Senator," in Journal of Negro History (1922) ,
VII, pp. 243-56.

“Amer. Ann. Cycl., 1875, p. 576. According to Lynch, Grant decided
against sending troops because he felt the state was already lost and
because a Republican delegation from Ohio feared the political effect of
such action upon the October elections there. — J. R. Lynch, op. cit., pp.
150 ff. The press, in accord with the decision of both political parties to
restore Bourbon domination to the South, hailed Grant’s action. This
is true of such Republican papers as the N. Y. Tribune, Baltimore Sun,
Philadelphia Times, and Chicago Tribune. The N. Y. Times in its typi-
cally pompous manner asseverated: “The country will receive the
expressions of Mr. Pierrepont with entire satisfaction." — See Boutwell
Report, I, pp. 376-77.

67 Hinds County Gazette, Sept. 29, 1875; V. Wharton, in Phylon (1941), II,
p. 368.

88 General Order No. 7, State of Mississippi, dated Oct. 1, 1875. Caldwell’s
commission was dated Sept. 25.

“Morgan, op. cit., p. 481.

“ Yazoo Democrat, n.d., in PMHS (1912) , XII, pp. 408/.

81 Testimony of State’s Adjutant General, in Impeachment Testimony, p. 131.

“Ibid., pp. 19, 89-93, 131; Garner, op. cit., p. 384; PMHS (1906) , VI, pp. 67/.

48 Thus, George received the following telegram from the Democratic leader
at Edwards’ Depot on Oct. 9: “We learn that Caldwell, with one hundred
armed men are marching upon our town. What shall we do — submit or
resist? We are able to do either." He replied: “We advise to avoid a diffi-
culty, by all means. Escort is under orders." — Impeachment Testimony,
p. 260; see also PMHS (1906) , VI, p. 68.

“Aberdeen Examiner, Sept. 30, 1875; Garner, op. cit., p. 384. On Peyton’s
background, see Donald, op. cit., p. 448. Peyton resigned in 1876 and was
promptly given an annual pension of $3,000 by the Democrats while his
son received a juicy sinecure. — Boutwell Report, II, pp. 238/.

REFERENCE NOTES

248

“Caldwells own commission expired, officially, Oct 21 Ther* .
dence that his company made no haste in di arm ng buT al iu X'
accounted for_*xcept nine_by the end of October /n L, T WCre
PP- 137, 261-62; BoutJl Report, I, p 36 lmp ' achm ™ T ‘“-

Text of treaty in Impeachment Testimony, pp. 230 ff ■ see PMHt /uv\c\
VI. pp. 65-77; (1912), XII, p. 409; Boutwell Report p6M ° ' ’

” I875 ' P ‘ 516: B ° UtWe “ Rep ° rt ‘ "* D0C ‘ Ev - P- 20: Garner,

mi !°“ tWt!l Rep0rt ’ Doc - Ev - PP- 160-69; Greenville Times, Oct 30 1875-
Wharton, op. cit., pp. 336-41. The bribery ran the eamut from
bill to a yearly pension of $3,000 (as already indicated) and the position of
a college presidency for ex-Senator Revels. Revels campaigned for the
Democrats ,n 1875, and two days after the election wrote a letter to Gram
assuring him of the fairness of the vote and hailing the result. In 1876 the
Democrats reinstated him as President of Alcorn [I] College. Revels’ letter
to the President was probably the best single propaganda tfevice the Demo
crats had and was widely reprinted— The Nation, Jan. 6, 1876, XXIII p 9-
Amer. Ann. Cycl., 1875, pp. 517/, W. L. Fleming, ed.. Documentary «££
of Reconstruct, on (2 vols., Cleveland, 1907) , II, pp. 402#. ^ ^

- Boutwell Report ,11, Doc. Evid., pp. 160-69. The next day a mass meeting

u.«.TTte" o^,‘?K d P i;!'“ i0 ” * purpo " ■“>

" Houston Bur rus to Gov. Ames, Nov. 1, 1875 (received, Nov. 4) , Ibid p 99

" £?' ’ P Ct - 28 ’ ,875 ' XXI ’ P’ 269 - For ^ extraordinary piece

HenrvT/,! J* lSt0n «> w,tin g see the handling of this election in R. S.
Henry, The Story of Reconstruction (N. Y., 1938) , p. 544.

n See Wharton, op. cit., pp. 345, 361-62; Wells, op. cit., pp. 103-04.

“ Wa u shin g ton - J“'y 8- 1876 . — Boutwell Report, I, p.

496. Wei borne fled a lynch mob in December, 1875. ^ F

’‘Thus, in Dec. 1875, six Negro leaders were lynched at Rolling Fork The
press continued to call for violence through Dec. 1875 and Jan. 1876 -see
Boutwell Report, II, Doc. Evid., p. 167. 6

” 435-4o" aldWeI1 S tCStinl0ny * S the basis for M'S— Boutwell Report, I, pp.

’•This was Judge E. W. Cabaniss, another moderate Republican who reneged.
He served as a minority of one Republican on a committee of three^t
up by the Democratic Party to investigate the Moss Hill riot. The report
of this committee — a complete whitewash— was used for propaganda pur-
poses during and after the 1875 campaign. — PMHS (1912) , XII p 387
77 PMHS (1912) , XII, p. 428.

"Quoted without date in Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia. 1877 (nj., II).

P „ , 2 . 3 ' ; ,n P a “- b y P - s - Foner - History of the Labor Movement

in the United States (N. Y.. 1947) , p. 464.

"Compare this account with that in Jesse T. Wallace’s A History of the
Negroes of Mississippi from 1865 to 1890 (Clinton, Miss., 1927, Ph.D.

' and in W ’ A ’ Cate - Luci ™ Q- C. Lamar
(Chapel Hill,- 1935) , chapter XII, “Mississippi Redeemed.”

INDEX

Abellino, Negro leader of maroons, 18
Adams, Charles F., on Abolitionism,
61

Adams, John, on abolition, 42
Adams, John Q., on slave rebellion,
70

Alabama, maroons in, 29
Alcorn, James L., 164; elected Gov.
of Miss., 172; opposes anti-Klan
law, 175; breaks with Ames, 175n.;
opposes Federal intervention, 179;
reassures Attorney -General, 182
Allen, Major, Federal commander in
Clinton, Miss., 178
Allen, Richard, buys own freedom, 38
Allen, William, encourages Vesey
plot, 45

American Colonization Society, 34-35
American Revolution, relation to
Abolitionism, 42-43, 60
Ames, Adelbert, radical leader in
Miss., 171; breaks with Alcorn,
175n.; orders disbanding of armed
clubs, 179; enrolls militia, 180; ca-
pitulates, 182

Anderson, Aaron, Negro awarded
Medal of Honor, 128
Appalachicola Bay, Fla., Negro fort
at, 17

Arkansas, state convention of Negroes
at, 161

Arms, of Negro troops, inferior,
87-88

Ashe, Charlotte, tries to buy chil-
dren’s freedom, 38
Ashepoo, S. S., maroons near, 17
Augusta, A. T., Negro surgeon in
Union army, 80-81
Augusta, Ga., slaves set fires in, 46
Austin, Miss., Negroes killed in, 176
Ayler, William, Negro pilot in Union
navy, 123

Balch, G. B., Lt.. U. S. Navy, on
“enlistment landings,” 119
Ballou, Adin, pacifism of, 68

Bayne, Dr. Thomas, Negro leader
in Norfolk, 139, 141, 142, 161
Beasly, Bob, a murdered Negro, 178
Beecher, Henry Ward, and Kansas, 61
Bel berry, Benjamin, buys self and
wife, 37

Bernard, David D., on militant Abo-
litionism, 69

Bimey, James, on militant Abolition-
ism, 57

Bimey, William, doubts efficacy of
moral suasion, 56-57
“Black and Tan” convention, in
Miss., 170-71

Bladen county, N. C., maroons in, 18,
24. 28

Blake, Robert, Negro awarded Medal
of Honor, 128

Bolling, Samuel P., buys freedom, 38
Borey, A. E., on poor commissioned
officers, 89-90

Bovina, Miss., maroons near, 28
Bowze, Tony, buys freedom, 32
Bragg, Thomas A., Governor of N. C.,
and maroons, 28

Brents, George, attempts to buy son’s
freedom, 38

Brian, Hugh, early anti-slavery agi-
tator, 41

Brian, Jonathan, early anti-slavery
agitator, 41

Brimsmaid, George, Negro, hanged
by Confederate troops, 130-31
British, use Negroes in defense of
Savannah, 13

Brooks, Albert, buys self and family,
37

Brown, B. Gratz, on training of
Negro troops. 88

Brown, Jabez, Jr.. Georgia judge, op-
poses slavery, 44

Brown. John, talks with Douglass,
58; writes to Spooner, 63; effect of
his raid, 68-69

Brownsville, Miss., militia company
formed at, 181

«49

INDEX

25°

Bruce, Blanche K., Negro U. S. Sen-
ator, 179

Bryan, Andrew, buys freedom, 38
Buchanan, George, anti-slavery speak-
er, 43

Buffalo, Negro convention at, 56
Burnside, General, on Negroes flock-
ing to Union army, 29
Burritt, Elijah H., flees lynch mob
in Georgia, 41

Cabaniss, E. W., a “friend” of Cald-
well, 186

Cabarrus county, N. C.. maroons in,
16

Cabell, Buck, betrayer of Caldwell,
185

Carteret county, N. C., maroons in,
18

Casualties, of Negroes, in Union navy,
129-30, 189-92

Catawba Indians, used against ma-
roons, 14

Chapel Hill, N. C., violence in,
against Negroes, 152
Chaplin, William L., militant Abo-
litionist, 72

Charles City county, Va., troubled by
maroons, 15

Chauncey, Isaac, orders quota on
Negroes in navy, 115
Cherokee Indians, slaves of, flee, 26-27
Chester, T. Morris, 147
Chesterfield county, Va., troubled by
maroons, 15

Choctaw Indians, slaves of, flee, 26-27
Christ Church parish, S. C., planters’
petition on maroon, 22-24
Cincinnati, Negroes of, buy freedom,
35

Citizenship, of Negro, denied, 114;
affirmed, 115

Civil War, Negroes offer services in,
71; see also chapters IV, V
Clayton, J. H., fights fugitives, 29
Cleveland, Ohio, activities in, to buy
freedom of slaves, 37-38
Clinch, Duncan, Col., fights Indians
and Negroes, 17

Clinton, Miss., home of Charles Cald-
well, 163; terror in, 177

Coahoma county, Miss., sheriff driven
out of, 182; election results in, 184
Coffin, Levi, on buying freedom, 39;
on Fairfield, 73

Colored American , Negro newspaper,
discusses non-resistance, 53-54
Comanchce Indians, of Mexico, 28
Confederacy, policy of, toward Negro
troops, 94-98; Negroes in service of,
112

Conspiracy, slave, in Alabama, 28
“Contraband,” meaning in Union
navy, 190

Contract, for purchase of freedom,
32-33

Conventions, of Negroes, in Buffalo,
56; in Philadelphia, 61; see also
Chapter VI

Cook, Fields, Negro leader in Rich-
mond, 146

Cook, George W., Negro leader in
Norfolk, 138, 142

Cooks, Negro, enlisted in Union
Army, 101-04; in Confederate army,
112

Cooper, Tom, leader of N. C. slave
outlaws, 16

Corinth, Miss., Negroes in defense of,
106

Cornish, Samuel E., Negro editor, 54
Creek Indians, oppose flight of Ne-
groes, 28; Negroes flee to, 144
Creole , ship captured by slaves, 55
Culliatt, Adam, killed by maroons, 15
Currituck county, N. C., maroons in,
30

Cypress Swamp, La., maroons in, 25

Dalton, Ga., surrendered to Confed-
erate troops, 97

Dana, Charles, on Negro arms, 88
Danders, Jacob, and Vesey plot, 45
Daniels, Josephus, on naval casualties,
129

Danna, Charles, Negro soldier in
“white” regiment, 103
Davis, Noah, makes public appeals
for funds for family's freedom, 34
Dees, Clement, Negro recommended
for Medal of Honor, 127

INDEX

Deitzler, George W., Col., requests
transfer of Negro soldier, 100
Delany, Martin R., Negro militant
Abolitionist, 60

Dent, Lewis, Judge, candidate for
governor of Miss., 172
Derham, James, buys freedom, 38
Dickson, Moses, founds secret Negro
societies, 57

Dillingham, Richard, militant Abo-
litionist, 72

Dismal Swamp, in N. C., and Va.,
refuge for maroons, 12
District of Columbia, rulings on buy-
ing freedom, 34

Dogan, John, purchases own and
family’s freedom, 196
Doolittle, James R., Senator, on sup-
pressing revolt of slaves, 70
Douglass, Frederick, influence of
John Brown on, 58; views on non-
resistance, 56, 59, 62, 68
Douglass, Lewis H., represents Ne-
groes of Md., 161

Dover Swamp, N. C., maroon camp
in, 25

Drayton, Capt., of the Pearl , liberates
slaves, 58-59

Dublin County, N. C., maroons in,
24

East Florida, and fugitive slaves, 16
Easton, Hosea, 52

Edwards’ Depot, Miss., militia com-
pany formed at, 181
Emancipation Proclamation, 71-72
Equipment, of Negro troops, 86
Evans, Joseph P., buys freedom, 38

Fairbank, Calvin, militant Abolition-
ist, 72

Fairfield, John, militant Abolitionist,
72-73

Fatigue duty, required of Negro
troops in excess, 82-85
Fatigue regiments, of Negroes, 86
Fayetteville, N. C., Walker’s Appeal ,
in, 47

Ferebee, Bob, maroon leader, 20
Fifty-fourth Mass. Regt., at Fort
Wagner, 91-92

251

Florida, maroons in, 28, 29, 70; state
convention of Negroes in, 161
Floyd, R. F., Confederate General,
seeks martial law, 29
Forsyth, John, Gov. of Ga., troubled
by Walker’s Appeal, 46
Forten, James, Negro Abolitionist,

50

Fort Wagner, storming of, 91-92
Foster, Stephen S., response to
Spooner, 66

Fredericksburg, Va., buying freedom
in, 35

Freedom's Journal, 46
Free Negroes, assist maroons, 18; hold
relatives in nominal slavery, 39;
distribute Walker’s Appeal , 47;
and insurrection, 53
Free Soil Party, views of Negro mem-
bers of, 59-60

French, J. R., response to Spooner,
63

Galloway, A. H., Negro leader in
Wilmington, N. C., 151
Garnet, Henry, H., Negro militant
Abolitionist, 55-56, 68, 142
Garrison, William, L., opinion on
resistance, 48-49, 52, 69-70, 74
Gates county, N. C, maroons in, 18
George, J. Z., 179, 182
Georgetown, S. C., maroons near, 18
Georgia, Negroes in, seek suffrage,
144; see also Augusta, Savannah
Giddings, J. R., Ohio congressman,
refers to maroons, 27-28; opinion
on Creole, 55; and the Pearl, 58-
59; reply to Doolittle, 70-71
Gilbert, William, early anti-slavery
advocate, 42

Gillmore, Q. A., Gen., on treatment
of Negro troops, 82
Glen, James, Gov. of S. C., on ma-
roons, 12

Gooch, Lt. Gov. of Va., on maroons,
12

Grant, Ulysses S., approves exonera-
tion of Shepard, 90; appoints Ames,
171; on Miss, election, 184n.
Green, Beriah, 56

Green, Jesse, buys self and family, 37

INDEX

252

Green, Judge, of Tenn. Supreme
Court, S3

Griffith, Confederate Colonel, on
murder of Negro prisoners, 96
GrimW, Angelina and Sarah, oppose
violence, 53

Habersham, James, Gov. of Ga., on
maroons, 13

Hailstock, Rosetta, buys self and
family, 37

Haitian Revolution and Abolition-
ism, 43-44

Hail, Prince, Negro anti -slavery ad-
vocate, 44

Hamilton, Nelson, Negro leader in
Richmond, 146

Hamilton, Paul, battles fugitive
slaves in S. C., 15
Hammond, Jabez, militant Abolition-
ist, 54, 60

Hanesville, Miss., maroons near, 27
Harley, William, attacks S. C. ma-
roons, 14

Harriet Lane, Federal vessel captured
at Galveston, 105

Harwell, Armistead, Negro agent for
buying freedom of slave, 36
Hawkins, J., General, appeals for
better arms, 87-88

Heath, Tom, free Negro jailed by
Confederacy, 105-06
Hedrick, Benjamin S., response to
Spooner, 64

Helper, Hinton R., response to
Spooner, 63-64

Higginson, Thomas W., response to
Spooner, 65

Hood, J. B., Confederate General,
on Negro troops, 95-96
Hopkins, Samuel, early anti-slavery
writer, 42

Horton, George M., slave poet, 45
Howard, Oliver O., Major-General,
investigates affairs in Richmond,
148; on Edisto Island, S. C., 158
Hunter, David, Brig.-Gcn., early
arming of Negroes, 110
Hunter, Isaac, buys own family's
freedom, 37

Hutson, Thomas, fights against ma-
roons, 14

Igneshias, John, encourages Vesev
plot, 45 y

Indians, use of, against maroons
15-14; fight with Negroes against
whites, 16; see also Catawba, Cher-
okee, Choctaw, Comanche, Creek,
Notchee, Seminole
Indian Territory (Oklahoma), ma-
roons in, 26, 27

Industrialization, attempt to en-
courage, 173

Intelligence, military and naval,
brought to Union forces by Ne-
groes, 105-06, 131-35
Isam, Negro leader of maroons in
N. C., 19

Jackson, Francis, denounces Consti-
tution, 57; opposes Spooner, 63
Jackson, Luther P., Negro historian,
36

Jacksonborough, S. C., maroons in,
19

Jay, William, attitude on Constitu-
tion, 70

Jim-Crow, relative absence of, in
Navy, 124; see Chapter VI, VII
Joe, Negro maroon leader, 20
Johnson, Alfred, tries to buy wife's
freedom, 38

Johnston county, N. C., maroons in,
18

Johnston, Samuel, buys freedom of
wife and children, 37
Jones, Absalom, buys own freedom, 38
Jones county, N. C., maroons in, 24
Jones, Peter K., Negro leader in
Petersburg, 150

Kansas War, effect on Abolitionism,
61

Keeling, William, Negro leader in
Norfolk, 142

Kentucky, allows contracts for pur-
chase of freedom, 33
Ku Klux Klan, 174-75

INDEX

Labor Associations, Norfolk Negroes
call for, 143; see also Strikes, Trade
unions

Land, Negroes' desires and struggles
for, 144; resist eviction in Hamp-
ton, 150; land purchasing effort in
Lenoir county, N. C., 151; resist-
ance against peonage, 155, 168;
resist eviction on Edisto Island,
158-59; Negroes seek status as
renters of, 174

Lane, Lunsford, buys own and fam-
ily’s freedom, 37

Lawrence, William, Bishop, on
wealth, 184n.

Lawson, John, Negro, wins Medal of
Honor, 128

Leland, Louisa, letter from the
South, 73-74

Lewis, R. A., planter, petitions con-
cerning maroons, 28

Lewis, Thomas, free Negro, dis-
tributes Walker’s Appeal, 47

Lewisville, S. C., Union sailors cap-
tured at, 126

Liberty Party, and non-resistance, 59

Littlefield, Charles E., Congressman,
requests data on Navy, 119

Logan, John L., Confederate Colonel,
on murder of Negro prisoners,
96

Loguen, J. W., Negro militant Abo-
litionist, 60

Louisiana, recognizes master-slave
contract for purchase of freedom,
33; bad conditions of contraband
camps in, 109; self-registration of
Negroes in, 156

Lovejoy, Elijah, murdered by pro-
slavery mob, 53

Lynch, John R., Negro Congressman,
185

Lynching, of Negro maroons, 26

Macon, Miss., Negroes killed in, 177

Mann, Daniel, response to Spooner,
66-67

Marion county, S. C., maroons in, 29

Maritime activities, of Negroes, 114-
15

Maroon, usage of word, 11

2 53

Marriott, Charles, for non-resistance,
53

Martin, J. P., anti-slavery writer, 43
Martin, Samuel, buys freedom of
self and others, 35-36
Maryland, court rulings on buying
freedom, 34; state convention of
Negroes, in, 161

Mason, John, Negro militant Abo-
litionist, 73

Matthews, William E., represents
Maryland Negroes, 161
May, Samuel J., opposes use of force,
51

McDonogh, John, 34
McIntosh, Peter, Negro, escapes cap-
ture, 127

Meachum, J. B., buys freedom of
several slaves, 36

Medal of Honor, Negro winners of,
from Union Navy, 127-29
Mexico, maroons flee to, 27; slave-
holders enter, seeking fugitives, 28
Miles, John D., manumits slave, 32
Milledgeville, Ga., Walker’s Appeal
appears in, 47

Miller, G. P., Negro offers to raise
troops, 71

Millikin’s Bend, Battle of, Negroes
at 88

Mingoe, maroon leader, 12
Minor, Jane, buys freedom of several
slaves, 36

Mississippi, petition from Negroes in,
156; see also Chapter VII
Missouri, state convention of Negroes
in, 159-60

Mitchell, Jones, buys own freedom,
36

Mobile county, Ala., maroons in, 21,
26

Mobley, Handy, buys freedom of own
family, 37

“Modocs,” Miss., terrorists, 178-187
Montgomery, James, Col., on treat-
ment of Negro troops, 84-85
Morgan, A. T., radical white leader
in Miss., 177; rejects proposal to
attack Bourbons, 180
Morgan, Peter G., buys own free-
dom, 38

INDEX

*54

Moses, Negro maroon leader, 25
Moss Hill, Miss., riot at, 177
Mygatt, Alson, radical white leader in
Miss., 170

Nash county, N. C., maroons in, 28
Nashville, Negro convention in, 138
Nation, The, and reconstruction,
183,184

Nelson, Preacher, helps Caldwell,
186

“Nero,” pseudonym of militant Abo-
litionist, 50-51

New Bern, N. C., Negroes at defense
of. 111

New England, buying freedom in, 32
New England Workingmen’s Associ-
ation, stand on slavery, 57-58
New Hanover county, N. C., ma-
roons in, 24

Newman, Daniel, comments on Negro
allies of Indians, 16-17
New Orleans, Walker’s Appeal in, 47;
Negro convention at, 138; strike
in, 155

Norfolk county, Va., maroons in, 19
Norfolk, Va., Negro meetings in, 138-
44

Notchee Indians, used against ma-
roons, 12

North Carolina, Walker’s Appeal in,
47; Negroes of, seek suffrage, 144-
45; state convention of Negroes in,
152-54

Oakes, William, for non-resistance, 52
Officers, lower casualty rates of, in
Civil War, 79; poor quality of, for
Negro troops, 89-90
Oklahoma, see Indian Territory
Olmsted, F. L., refers to maroons, 28
Onslow county, N. C., maroons in,
18, 24

Orr, J. L., delegate to S. C. constitu-
tional convention, 137
Otis, James, anti-slavery sentiments
of, 42

Page, Nathaniel, on use of Negro
troops, 92-93

p ai g e Thomas F„ Jr.. Negro leader
m Norfolk, 142
Paine, Thomas, on slavery, 43
Parker, Theodore, response to Spoon-
er, 64-65

“Passing,” in Union army, 100
Pay, of Negro troops, 81, 93.94
Pease, Joachim, Negro, wins Medal
of Honor, 128

Pepper, Calvin, white radical leader
in Va., 140, 161

Perkins, George W., a Garrisonian,
60

Perrin, Mrs., of S. C., her slave lib-
erated by legislature, 20
Perry, Benjamin, F., provisional-
governor of S. C., 136-37
Petersburg, Va., buying freedom in,
35, mob in, 49; Battle of the Mine
at, 91; Negroes in, seek suffrage,
145-46 6

Peyton, E. G., Miss, judge, 182
Philadelphia, convention of Negroes
in, 61

Phillips, Wendell, response to Spoo-
ner, 64; on right to rebel, 68, 74
Pierpont, F. H., governor of Va.,
140

Pierrepont, Edwards, Grant’s attor-
ney-general, 179
Pilots, Negroes as, 122-23
Pinckney, Thomas, gov. of S. C., on
maroons, 13

Pine Bluff, Ark., Negroes at defense
of, 110

Pineville, S. C., maroons in, 20
Pioneers, use of Negroes as, 106-07
Planter, Confederate vessel delivered
to Union fleet by Negroes, 133-34
Porter, David D., on use of Negro
in navy, 121; institutes Jim-Crow
regulations, 124-25
Powers, Frank, Confederate Colonel,
on murder of Negro prisoners, 96
Price, George W., Negro leader in
Wilmington, N. C., 151
Putnam, Ohio, town-folk discuss non-
resistance, 53

Pyle, Robert, Quaker, protests against
slavery, 41

INDEX

Quakers, on slavery. 41; disown
Charles Marriott, 53; in Brown
raid, 68

Randolph, Edmund, of Va., on ma-
roons, 13

Randolph, John, Jr., Negro leader
in Wilmington, N. C., 151
Rebellion, slave and maroon, 18;

plans for, 50, 62, 71
Redpath, James, appeals for insur-
rections, 67-68, 69

Rhodes, Andrew, encourages Vesey
plot, 45

Rice, David, opponent of slavery in
Ky., 44

Richardson, Jacob, Negro leader in
Vicksburg, 148

Richmond, Nicholas, Negro leader in
Charlottesville, Va., 150
Richmond, Va., buying freedom in,
35; Walker’s Appeal discovered in,
47; Negroes of, protest ill-treat-
ment, 146-47; strike in, 155
“Riot,” technique of the, 176
Rosecrans, Major-General, on officers
for Negro units, 91; on use of
Negro cooks, 101

Ross, Alexander M., militant Aboli-
tionist, 72

Ross, L. S., Confederate Brig.-Gen.,
on behavior of Negro troops, 98
Royal, a Negro, freed for betraying
maroons, 20-21

Ruggles, David, Negro militant Abol-
itionist, 54

Sampson, John P., editor of Cincin-
nati Colored Citizen, 152
Savannah, Ga., Negroes at defense of,
in Revolution, 13; slaves set fires
in, 46; Walker’s Appeal discovered
in, 47; Negroes of, seek suffrage,
144; Negroes strike in, 154
Saxton, Rufus, Gen., on emancipa-
tion, 72; on fighting of Negro
pickets, 110; on feelings of S. C.
Negroes, 160

Seddon, James, Confederate Secretary
of War, on Negro prisoners, 94
Selvic, Wallace, Negro guide of Union
troops, 105

*55

Seminole War. Second, 26-27
Servants, Negroes used as officen',
104-05

Sharkey, William L., provisional
governor of Miss., 164-65
Shaw, Robert G., Col., on Negro
troops, 88

Shepard, Isaac, Col., orders Negro
troops to whip white soldier, 90
Sherman, W. T., General, use of
Negroes as cooks and teamsters,
101; use of Negro pioneers, 107
Shorter, Gov., of Ala., on deserters
and maroons, 29

Sills, Jeremiah, Negro landsman,
killed in battle, 127
Simmsport, La., battle of, 88
Skill man, Isaac., attacks slavery, 42
Slocum, H. W., Major-General, poli-
tics of, 165

Small, Stephen, Negro pilot, 123
Smalls, Robert, Negro leader in
Planter exploit, 133-34
Smith, Gerrit, views on non-resistance,
54, 61

Smith, Humphrey, indicted for in-
citing unrest, 45

Smith, J. B., Negro militant Aboli-
tionist, 59-60

Smith, J. V. C., tours North for
surgeons, 80

Smith, James, distributes Walker’s
Appeal, 47

Smith, Thomas, Lt. Col., fights In-
dians and Negroes in East Florida,
16

Snead, Walter, Negro leader in Rich-
mond, 146

South Carolina, court rulings on pur-
chase of freedom, 34; political his-
tory of, in 1865, 136-37; state con-
vention of Negroes in, 157-58
Spooner, Lysander, plans for Negro
uprisings, 62-67; attitude on Con-
stitution, 70

Squire, Negro maroon leader, 25
Stanly, J. C., purchases freedom of
many Negroes, 36

St. Landry parish. La., maroons in-
29

256

INDEX

Still, Peter, buys own and family’s
freedom, 37

Still, William, Negro militant Abo-
litionist, 73

Strikes, in Savannah, 154; in Rich-
mond, 154-55; in New Orleans,
155; in Mississippi, 168
Suffrage, right to, demanded by Ne-
gro people, 138-62, 166-67
Sumner, Charles, presents Negroes’
petitions, 149, 156, 167
Surgeons, inadequacy of, for Negro
troops, 79-80

Surry County, Va., maroons in, 29

Tappan, Lewis, response to Spooner’s
ideas, 63

Teachers, special objects of Bourbon
terror, 175

Tennessee, recognizes master-slave
contract to buy freedom, 33; slave
plots in, 73; mistreatment of Ne-
gro troops in, 82; state conven-
tion of Negroes in, 149
Thompson, George, opposes use of
force, 51

Thoreau, Henry D., 68
Trimble, H. F., Negro leader in Nor-
folk, 138

Tubman, Harriet, in Brown’s raid,
68; in Underground Railroad, 73;
as Union scout, 105
Turner, Aletheia, buys freedom of
several slaves, 36

Turner, Nat, leads slave rebellion,
25, 50

Ullman, Daniel, Brig. -Gen., on treat-
ment of Negro troops, 83-84, 87,
98

Vesey, Denmark, whites involved in
slave plot of, 45

Vicksburg, Miss., Negroes in attack
upon, 106; attempt to envelop from
rear, 134-35; Negro mass meetings
in, 148-49; Negroes killed in, 176
Virginia, state convention of Ne-
groes in, 150; see also Norfolk,
Petersburg, Richmond

Walker, David, militant Negro Abo-
litionist, 46-48
Walker, William, 19
Walker, William, Negro sergeant
executed for mutiny, 94
War of 1812, Negroes in, 114, 115
Webster, Delia, militant Abolitionist
72

Wei borne, Eugene B„ Caldwell’s
lieutenant, 180, 184
Weld, Theodore, on Negroes buying
freedom, 35; on force, 54
Welles, Gideon, Secretary of Navy,
on use of Negroes in Navy, 116-17,
120-21

Whipper, William, Negro, for non-
resistance, 53

Whites, assist Negroes, 25, 26, 28, 29,
30, 41-42, 45, 140, 170, 185
Williams, Benjamin, Negro serves as
guide for Union navy, 132
Wiliams, David R., on maroons, 17
Williams, George W., historian, error
of, 76-77

Williamsburg County, S. C., ma-
roons in, 18

Wilmington, N. C., troubled by ma-
roons, 15, 25, 26; Walker’s Appeal
in, 47; Negro meetings in, 151-52
Wilson, Henry, Senator, 81
Wilson, Joseph T., Negro, enlists in
“white" regiment, 100; active in
Norfolk, 142, 143

Winston County, Miss., schools
burned in, 175

Women, Negro, as maroons, 27;

rights enhanced, 173
Woods, James, 104
Woolfolk, Peter, Negro leader, 146
Wooster, W. B., hanged by Union
officers, 90

Wright, Henry C., attitudes on re-
sistance, 68-69

Yazoo City, Miss., terror in, 177; elec-
tion results in, 184
Young, Robert A., Negro anti -slavery
author, 46

Youngblood, Major-General, 17